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J Jiff "i.'4. No. 14.1. Jnly <1, 1883. Annuol SnbwrlptloD, $iS.I». 


t DENIS DUYAL 


W. M. THACKERAY 


EDt«rt(t at the Pnat Offlee. If. T., ae teeond*«lBn matter. ' 
Copyright. 1683, by John W. Lotkll C* 


HKW VORIC 

QI\N • W * OVE L • CO/APAKY+ 

= I4-6.1^ Ve3EY STREET 


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CLOTH BINDINd for this volume can be obtained from any bookseller or nowsdealoTp price lOdfs 





^ “Dp, Newton has had given to him the spiritual 
sense of what people wanted, and this he has rev-’ 
erently, clearly and definitely furnished.’’— 

Herald, March 17. 



RIGHT AND WRONG 


OF THE BIB 


JJ.ii, 


By Rev. R. Heber Newton. 

No. 83, “Lovell’s Library,” Paper Covers, 20 Cents; Ajlso • 
IN Cloth, Red Edges, 75 Cents. 


“ Dr. Newton has not sep^^ri-ttd his heart from his head in these 
religious studies, aud has thus been preserved from the mistakes 
which a purely critical mind might have been led.” — N- F. Times, 
March 12. 

“Those who wish to abuse Dr. Newton should do so before 
reading his lectures, as, after reading them, they may find it quite 
impossible to do so.” — N, F. 8tar, March 11. 

“It is impossible to read these sermons without high admiration 
of the author’s courage ; of his honesty, his reverential spirit, his 
wide and careful reading, and his true conservatism. 
lAUrary Churchman, 

For sale by all Newsdealers and Booksellers. 

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NUMBERS NOW READY: 


1. Hyperion, by Longfellow, - .20 

2. Outre-Mer, by Longfellow, - .20 

3. The Happy IJoy, by Bjornson, - .10 

4. Arne, by Bjornson, - - - .10 

5. Frankenstein, by Mrs. Shelley, .10 

6. The Last of the Moliicans, - .20 

7. Clytie, by Joseph Hatton, - .20 

8. The Moonstone, by Collins Pt. I .10 

9. Do. Part II, - - - - .10 

10. Oliver Twist, by Dickens - - .20 

11. The Coming Pace : or the New 

Utopia, by Lord Lytton, *• .10 

12. Lelia ; or the Siege of Granada, .10 

13. The Three Si^aniards, Walker, .20 

14. The Tricks of the Greeks Un- 

veiled, by Kobert Hondin, • .20 

15. ' L’Abbe Constantin, by Halevy, .20 

16. Freckles, by K. F. Redclilf, - .20 

17. The Dark Colleen,- - - .20 

18. They Were Married ! - - - .10 

19. Seekers after God, by Farrar, .20 

20. The Spanish Nun, - - - .10 

21. The Green Mountain Boys, - .20 

22. Fleurette, by Eugene Scribe, - .20 

23. Second Thoughts, - - - .20 

24. The New Magdalen, by Collins, .20 

25. Divorce, by Margaret Lee, - .20 

20. Life of Washington, - - - .20 

27. Social Etiquette, - - - .15 

28. Single Heart and Double Face, .10 

29. Irene; or the Lonely Manor, - ,20 

30. Vice Versa, by F. Anstey, - .20 

31. Ernest Maltra vers, by Lytton, - .20 

32. The Haunted House, and Cal- 

deron the Courtier, Lytton - .10 

33. John Halifax, by Miss Mulock, .20 

34. 800 Tjcagues on the Amazon - .10 

35. The Cry ptogram,by Jules Verne, .10 

36. Life of Marion, - - - .20 

37. Paul and Virginia, - - - .10 

38. Tale of Two Cities, by Dickeu'^, .20 

39. The Hermits, by Kingsley, - .20 

40. An Adventure in Thule, and 

Marriage of Moira Fergus, - .10 

41. A Marriage in High Lifcj - - .20 

42. Kobin, by Mrs. Parr - - - .20 

43. Two on a Tower, by Hardy, - .20 
41. Kasselas, by Samuel Johnson, - .10 

45. Alice: or the Mysteries, being 

Part II of Ernest Maltravers, .20 

46. Duke of Kandos, by A. Mathey, .20 

47. Baron Munchausen - - • .10 

48. A Princess of Thule, - - - .20 


49. The Secret Despatch, Grant, .20 

50. Early Days of Christianity, by 

Canon Farrar, D. D., Part I, .20 
“ II, .20 


51. Vicar of Wakefield - - - .10 

52. Progress and Poverty, - - .20 

53. The Spy, by J. F. Cooper, - .20 

54. East Lynne, by Mrs. Wood, - .20 

55. A Strange Story, by Lytton, - .20 


56. Adam Bede, by Geo. Eliot, P’t I, .15 

“ “ “ “II, .15 

57. The Golden Sliaft, by Gibbon, .20 

58. Portia; or by Passions liocked, .20 


59. Last Days of Pompeii, - - .20 

GO. The Two Duchesses, - . - - .20 

61. Tom Brown at Rugby, - - .20 

62. The Wooing O’t, by Mrs. Alex- 

ander, Part I, - - . - .15 

Do Part Ii, - - - - .15 


63. The Vendetta, by Balzac, - .20 
6^1. Hypatia, by Kingsley, Part I, .15 
Do. Part II, - - - - .15 

65. Selma, by Mrs. J. G. Smith, - .15 

66. ISFargaret and Her Bridesmaids, .20 

67. Horse Shoe Robinson, Part I - .15 

Do. Do. Part II - .15 

68. Gulliver’s Travels, by Swift, - .20 

69. Amos Barton, by Geo. Eliot, - .10 

70. The Berber,by W. S. Mayo, - .20 

71. Silas Marner, by Geo. Eliot, - .10' 
7'2. The Queen of the County, - .20 
7'3. Life of Cromwell, by Hood, - .15 

74. Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte, .20 

75. Child’s History of England, - .20 

76. Molly Bawn, by The Duchess, .20 

77. Pillonc, .15 

78. Phyllis, by The Duchess, - - .20 

79. Romola, by Geo. Eliot, Part I, .15 

Do. Do. Part II, .15 

80. Science in Short Chapters, - .20 

81. Zanoni, by Lord Lytton, - - .20 

82. A Daughter of Heth, . - - .20 

83. The Right andWrongUses of the 

Bible, Rev. R. Ileber Newton, .20 

84. Night and Morning, Part I, - .15 

Do. D« Part II, - .15 

85. Shandon Bells, by Wm. Black, - .20 

86. Monica, by The Duchess, - - .10 

87. Heart and Science. - - - .20 

88. The Golden Calf, - - - .20 

89. Dean’s Daughter, - - - .20 

90 ;Mrs. Geoffrey, by The Duchess, .20 

91. Pickwick Papers, Part I, - - .20 

Do. Do. Part II, - - .20 

92. Airy Fairy Lilian, - - .20 

93 ^lacleod of Dai e, . . - ,20 

94. Tempest Tossed, Part I, - - .20 

Do. “ II, - - .20 

95. Letters From High Latitudes, - .20 

96. Gideon Fleyce, by Lucy, - .20 

97. India and Ceylon, by E. Haeckel, .20 

98. The Gyjisy Queen, ■ - - .20 

99. The AdmiraVs Ward, by Mrs. 

Alexander, - - - - .20 

100. Nimport, by Bynncr, Part I, .15 

Do. “ II, .15 

101. Harry Holbrooke, by Sir Randal 

II. Roberts, Bart., - .20 

102. Tritons, by Bynner, Part I, - .15 

Do. “ II, - .15 

103. Let Nothing You Dismay, by 

Walter Besant, - - - .10 

104. Lady Audley’s Secret, by Miss 

M.E. Braddon, - - - .20 

105. Woman’s Place To-day, by Lillie 

Devereux Blake, - - - .20 

106. Dunallan, Grace Kennedy, P’t I .15 

Do. Do. “ II .15 

107. House Keeping and Home Mak- 

ing, by Marlon Harland, - .15 

108. No N'ew Thing, by W. E. Norris .20 

109. The Spoopendyke Papers, by 

Stanley Huntley, - - - .20 

110. False Hopes, by Goldwin Smith, .15 

111. Capital and Labor, by Kellogg, .20 

112. Wanda, by Ouida, Part I, - - .15 

Do. “ II, - - .13 

113. More Words about the Bible, 

by Rev. James Bush, - - .20 

Loys, Lord Beresford, by The 
Duchess, 20 


By Miss MAliGAKET LEE. 


* Divorce 20 

By henry W. LONGFELLOW. 

♦Hyperion 20 

♦Oiitre-Mer 20 

By SAISIUEL LOVER. 

The Happy Man 10 

By lord LYTTON. 

The Coming Race 10 

Leila, or the Sie^e of Granada 10 

Earnest Maltravers XIO 

The Haunted House, and Calderou 

the Courtier 10 

Alice; a sequel to Earnest Maltravers. 20 

A Strange Story 20 

♦Last Days of Pompeii 20 

Zanoni 20 

Night and Morning, Part 1 15 

“ Part II 15 

Paul Clifford 20 

Lady of Lyons 10 

Money 10 

Richelieu 10 

By H. C. LUKENS, 

♦Jets and Flashes 20 

By Mrs. E. LYNN LINTON, 
lone Stewart 20 

By W. E. MAYO. 

The Berber 20 

By a. MATHEY. 

Duke of Kandos 20 

The Two Duchesses 20 

By JUSTIN H. MCCARTHY. 

An Outline of Irish History 10 

By EDWARD MOTT. 

♦Pike County Folks 20 

By MAX MULLER. 

*lndia, what can she teach us? 20 

By Miss MULOCK. 

♦John Halifax 20 

By R. HEBER NEWTON 
The Right and Wrong Uses of the 
Bible ' 20 

By W. E. NORRIS. 

♦No New Thing 20 

By OUIDA. 

♦Wanda, Part I !....! 5 

“ Part 11 15 

♦Under Two Flags, Part 1 20 

“ “ Part II 20 

By Mrs. OLIPHANT. 

♦The Ladies Lindorcs 20 

By LOUISA PARR. 

Robin 20 


I By JAMES PAYN. 

! *Thicker than Water 20 

By CHARLES READE. 

Single Heart and Double Face 10 

By REBECCA FERGUS REDCLIFF. 

Freckles 20 

By Sir RANDALL II. ROBERTS. 
Harry Holbrooke 20 

By Mrs. ROWSON. - 

Charlotte Temple \ . . .10 

By W. CLARK RUSSELL. 

♦A Sea Queen 20 

By GEORGE SAND. 

The Tower of Percemont 2 q 

By Mrs. W. A. SAVILLE. 

Social Etiquette 15 

By MICHAEL SCOTT. 

♦Tom Cringle’s Log 20 

By EUGENE SCRIBE. 
Fleurette 20 

By J. PALGRAYE SIMPSON. 
Haunted Hearts 10 

By GOLDWIN SMITH, D.C.L. 
False Hopes 15 

By dean swift 

Gulliver’s Travels 20 

By W. M. THACKERAY. 

■♦Vanity Fair, Part 1 15 

“ “ II , 15 

By Judge D. P. THOiMPSON. 
♦The Green Mountain Boys 20 

By THEODORE TILTON. 

Tempest Tossed, Part X 20 

“ “ Part II 20 

By JULES VERNE. 

*800 League.s on the Amazon 10 

♦The Cryptogram 10 

By GEORGE WALKER. 

♦The Three Spaniards 20 

By W. M. williams. 

Science in Short Chapters 20 

By Mrs. HENRY WOOD. 

♦East Lynne 20 

MISCELLANEOUS. 

Paul and Virginia 10 

Margaret and her Bridesmaids 20 

The QiHum of the County 20 

Baron Munchausen 10 



% 



t 


DENIS DUVAL 


WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 

1 


I 



NEW YORK: 

JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY, 

14 AND 16 Vesey Street. 



DENIS DUVAL. 


CHAPTER I. 

THE FAMILY TREE. 

To plague my wife, who does not understand pleasantries in 
the matter of pedigree, I once drew a fine family tree of my 
ancestors, with Claud Duval, captain and highwayman, stcs, 
per coll, in the reign of Charles II., dangling from a top branch. 
But this is only my joke with her High Mightiness my wife, and 
his Serene Highness my son. None of us Duvals have been 
suspercollated to my knowledge. As a boy, I have tasted a 
rope’s-end often enough, but not round my neck \ and the per- 
secutions endured by my ancestors in France for our Protestant 
religion, which we early received and steadily maintained, did 
not bring death upon us, as upon many of our faith, but only 
fines and poverty, and exile from our native country. The 
world knows how the bigotry of Lewis XIV. drove many families 
out of France into England, who have become trusty and loyal 
subjects of the British crown. Among the thousand fugitives 
'were my grandfather and his wife. They settled at Winchelsea, 
in Sussex, where there has been a French church ever since 
Queen Bess’s time and the dreadful day of Saint Bartholomew. 
Three miles off, at Rye, is another colony and church of our 
people : another fester where, under Britannia’s sheltering 

buckler, we have been free to exercise our fathers’ worship, and 
sing the songs of our Zion. 

My grandfather was elder and precentor of the church of 
Winchelsea, the pastor being Monsieur Denis, father of Rear- 
Admiral Sir Peter Denis, Baronet, my kind and best patron. 
He sailed with Anson in the famous ‘‘ Centurion,” and obtained 

(sSc.) 


590 


DENIS DUVAL. 


his first promotion through that great seaman : and of course 
you will all remember that it was Captain Denis who brought 
our good Queen Charlotte to England (7th September, 1761), 
after a stormy passage of nine days, from Stade. As a child I 
was taken to his house in Great Ormond Street, Queen Square, 
London, and also to the Admiral’s country-seat. Valence, near 
Westerham, in Kent, where Colonel Wolfe lived, father of the 
famous General James Wolfe, the glorious conqueror of Que- 
bec.* 

My father, who was of a wandering disposition, happened 
to be at Dover in the year 1761, when the Commissioners 
passed through, who were on their way to sign the treaty of 
Peace, known as the Peace of Paris. He had parted, after 
some hot words, I believe, from his mother, who was, like him- 
self, of a quick temper, and he was on the look-out for employ- 
ment when Fate threw these gentlemen in his way. Mr. Duval 
spoke English, French, and German, his parents being of 

Alsace, and Mr. having need of a confidential person to 

attend him, who was master of the languages, my father offered 
himself, and was accepted mainly through the good offices of 
Captain Denis, our patron, whose ship was then in the Downs. 
Being at Paris, father must needs visit Alsace, our native coun- 
try, and having scarce one guinea to rub against another, of 
course chose to fall in love with my mother and marry her out 
out of hand. Mans. mo 7 i ph'e.^ I fear, was but a prodigal ; but 
he was his parents’ only living child, and when he came home 
to Winchelsea, hungry and penniless, with a wife on his hand, 
they killed their fattest calf, and took both wanderers in. A 
short while after her .marriage, my mother inherited some prop- 
erty from her parents in France, and most tenderly nursed my 
grandmother through a long illness, in which the good lady died. 
Of these matters I knew nothing personally, being at the time 
a child two or three years old ; crying and sleeping, drinking 
and eating, growing, and having my infantile ailments, like 
other little darlings. 

A violent woman was my mother, jealous, hot, and domineer- 
ing, but generous and knowing how to forgive. I fancy my 
papa gave her too many opportunities of exercising this virtue, 
for during his brief life, he was ever in scrapes and trouble. 
He met with an accident when fishing off the French coast, and 
was brought home and died, and was buried at Winchelsea ; 

* I remember a saying of G Aug-st-s S-lw-n, Esq., regarding the General, which has 

not beer fold, as far as I know, in the anecdotes. A Macaroni guardsman, speaking of Mr. 
VVolf<» asked, “Was he a Jew? Wolfe was a Jev/ish name.” “Certainly,” says Mr. 
&-lw-n, “Mr. VVoffe was the Height of A brahavt. 


THE FAMILY TREE, 


591 


but tlie cause of his death I never knew until my good friend 
Sir Peter Denis told me in later years, when I had come to 
have troubles of my own. 

I was born on the same day with his Royal Highness the 
Duke of York, viz. the 13th of August, 1763, and used to be 
called the Bishop of Osnaburg by the boys in Winchelsea, 
where between us French boys and the English boys I promise 
you there was many a good battle. Besides being ancien and 
precentor of the French church at Winchelsea, grandfather 
was a perruquier and barber by trade ; and, if you must know 
it, I have curled and powdered a gentleman’s head before this, 
and taken him by the nose and shaved him. I do not brag of 
having used lather and brush : but what is the use of disguis- 
ing anything ? Tout se scait, as the French have it, and a great 
deal more too. There is Sir Humphrey Floward, who served 
with me second-lieutenant in the “ Meleager ” — he says he 
comes from the N — f-lk Howards ; but his father was a shoe- 
maker, and we* always called him Humphrey Snob in the gun- 
room. 

In France very few wealthy ladies are accustomed to nurse 
their children, and the little ones are put out to farmers’ wives 
and healthy nurses,. and perhaps better cared for than by their 
own meagre mothers. My mother’s mother, an honest farmer's 
wife in Lorraine (for I am the first gentleman of my family, 
and chose my motto * of fechnus ipsi not with pride, but with 
humble thanks for my good fortune), had brought up Ma- 
demoiselle Clarisse de Viomesnil, a Lorraine lady, between 
whom and her foster-sister there continued a tender friendship 
long after the marriage of both. Mother came to England, 
the wife of Monsieur mon papa; and Mademoiselle de Viomes- 
nil married in her own country. She was of the Protestant 
branch of the Viomesnil family, and all the poorer in conse- 
quence of her parents’ fidelity to their religion. Other members 
of the family were of the Catholic religion, and held in high 
esteem at Versailles. 

Some short time after my mother’s arrival in England, she 
heard that her dear foster-sister Clarisse was going to marry a 
Protestant gentleman of Lorraine, Vicomte de Barr, only son 
of M. le Comte de Saverne, a chamberlain to his Polish Maj- 
esty King Stanislas, father of the French Queen. M. de Sa- 
verne, on his son’s marriage, gave up to the Vicomte de Barr 
his house at Saverne, and here for a while the newly married 

*■ The Admiral insisted on taking or on a bend sable, three razors displayed proper, with 
the above motto. The family have adopted the mother’s coat-of-arms. 


592 


DENIS DUVAL, 


couple lived. I do not say the young couple, for the Vicomte 
de Barr was five-and-twenty years older than his wife, who was 
but eighteen when her parents married her. As my mother’s 
eyes were very weak, or, to say truth, she was not very skilful 
in reading, it used to be my lot as a boy to spell out my lady 
Viscountess’s letters to her soeuy' de lait, her good Ursule : and 
many a smart rap with the rolling-pin have I had over my nod- 
dle from mother as I did my best to read. It was a word and 
a blow with mother. She did not spare the rod and spoil the 
child, and that I suppose is the reason why I am so well grown 
' — six feet two in my stockings, and fifteen stone four last Tues- 
day, when I was weighed along with our pig. Mem. — My 
neighbor’s hams at Rose Cottage are the best in all Hamp- 
shire. 

I was so young that I could not understand all I read. 
But I remember mother used to growl in her rough way (she 
had a grenadier height and voice, and a pretty smart pair of 
black whiskers too) — my mother used to cry out, “ She suffers 
— my Biche is unhappy — she has got a bad husband. He is a 
brute. All men are brutes.” And with this she would glare 
at grandpapa, who was a very humble little man, and trembled 
before his bru, and obeyed her most obsequiously. Then 
mother would vow she would go home, she would go and suc- 
cor her Biche ; but who would lake care of these two imbe- 
ciles ? meaning me and my grandpapa. Besides, Madame 
Duval was wanted at home. She dressed many ladies’ heads, 
with very great taste, in the French way, and could shave, 
frizz, cut hair, and tie a queue along with the best barber in 
the county. Grandfather and the apprentice wove the wigs ; 
when I was at home, I was too young for that work, and was 
taken off from it, and §ent to a famous good school, Pocock’s 
grammar-school at Rye, where I learned to speak English like 
a Briton born as I am, and not as we did at home, where we 
used a queer Alsatian jargon of French and German. At 
Pocock’s I got a little smattering of Latin, too, and plenty of 
fighting for the first month or two. I remember my patron 
coming to see me in uniform, bl.ue and white laced with gold, 
silk stockings and white breeches, and two of his officers along 
with him. “ Where is Denis Duval ? ” says he, peeping into 
our school-room, and all the boys looking round with wonder 
at the great gentleman. Master Denis Duval was standing on 
a bench at the very moment for punishment, for fighting I sup- 
pose, with a black eye as big as an omelette. “ Denis would 
do very well if he would keep his fist off other boys’ noses,” 


THE FAMILY TREE. 


593 


says the master; and the Captain gave me a seven-shilling 
piece, and I spent it all but twopence before the night was 
over, I remember. Whilst I was at Pocock’s, I boarded with 
Mr. Rudge, a tradesman, who, besides being a grocer at Rye, 
was in the seafaring way, and part owner of a hshing-boat ; and 
he took some very queer fish in his nets, as you shall hear soon. 
He was a chief man among the Wesleyans, and I attended his 
church with him, not paying much attention to those most 
serious and sacred things in my early years, when I was a 
thoughtless boy, caring for nothing but lollipops, hoops, and 
marbles. 

Captain Denis was a very pleasant, lively gentleman, and 
on this day he asked the master, Mr. Coates, what was the 
Latin for a holiday, and hoped Mr. C. would give one to his boys. 
Of course we sixty boys shouted yes to that proposal ; and as 
for me. Captain Denis cried out, “ Mr. Coates, I press this fel- 
low with the black eye here, and intend to take him to dine with 
me at the ‘ Star.’ ” You may be sure I skipped off my bench, 
and followed my patron. He and his two officers went to the 
‘‘ Star,” and after dinner called for a crown bowl of punch, and 
though I would drink none of it, never having been able to bear 
the taste of rum or brandy, I was glad to come out and sit v/ith 
the gentlemen, who seemed to be amused with my childish 
prattle. Captain Denis 'asked me what I learned, and I dare 
say 1 bragged of my little learning : in fact I remember talking 
in a pompous way about Corderius and Cornelius Nepos ; and 
I have no doubt gave myself very grand airs. He^ asked 
whether I liked Mr. Rudge, the grocer with whom I boarded. 
I did not like him much, I said ; but I hated Miss Rudge and 
Bevil the apprentice most because they were always * * ^ 
here I stopped. “ But there is no use in telling tales out of 
school,” says I. ‘‘ We don’t do that at Pocock’s, we don’t.” 

And what was my grandmother going to make of me ? I 
said I should like to be a sailor, but a gentleman sailor, and 
fight for King George. And if I did I would bring' all my 
prize-money home to Agnes, that is, almost all of it — only keep 
a little of it for myself. 

“ And so you like the sea, and go out sometimes ? ” asks 
Mr. Denis. 

Oh, yes, I went out fishing. Mr. Rudge had a half share 
of a boat along with grandfather, and I used to help to clean 
her, and was taught to steer her, with many a precious slap on 
the head if I got her in the wind ; and they said 1 was a very 
good look-out. I could see well, and remember bluffs and 

3 « 


594 


DEXJS DUP^AL, 


headlands and so forth ; and I mentioned several places, points 
of our coasts, ay, and the French coast too. 

And what do you fish for 1 ’’ asks the Captain. 

‘‘ Oh, sir. I’m not to say anything about, that, Mr. Rudge 
says ! ” on which the gentlemen roared with laughter. They 
knew Master Rudge’s game, though I in my innocence did not 
understand it. 

“ And so you won’t have a drop of punch ? ” asks Captain 
Denis. 

No, sir, I made a vow I would not, when I saw Miss 
Rudge so queer.” 

“ Miss Rudge is often queer, is she ? ” 

‘‘ Yes, the nasty pig ! And she calls names, and slips down 
stairs, and knocks the cups and saucers about, and fights the 
apprentice and — but I mustn’t say anything more. I never 
tell tales, I don’t ! ” 

In this way I went on prattling with my patron and his 
friends, and they made me sing them a song in French, and a 
song in German, and they laughed and seemed amused at my 
antics and capers. Captain Denis walked home with me to our 
lodgings, and I told him how I liked Sunday the best day of 
the week — that is, every other Sunday — because I went away 
quite early, and walked three miles to mother and grandfather 
at Winchelsea, and saw Agnes. 

And who, pray, was Agnes To-day her name is Agnes 
Duval, and she sits at her work-table hard by. 'bhe lot of my 
life has been changed by knowing her. To win such a prize in 
life’s lottery is given but to very very few. What I have done 
(of any worth) has been done in trying to deserve her. I might 
have remained, but for her, in my humble native lot, to be 
neither honest nor happy, but that my good angel yonder suc- 
cored me. All I have I owe to her : but I pay with ail I 
have, and what creature can do more } 


CHAPTER II. 

THE HOUSE OF SAVERNE. 

Mademoiselle De Saverne came from Alsace, where her 
family occupied a much highei rank than that held by the 
worthy Protestant elder from Mhom her humble servant is 


THE HOUSE OF SA VERNE. 


S9S 


descended. Her mother was a Viomesnil, her father was of a 
noble Alsatian family, Counts of Barr and Saverne. The old 
Count de Saverne was alive, and a chamberlain in the court of 
his Polish Majesty good King Stanislas at Nanci, when his son 
the Vicomte de Barr, a man already advanced in years, brought 
home his blooming young bride to that pretty little capital. 

The Count de Saverne was a brisk and cheery old gentle- 
man, as his son was gloomy and severe. The Count’s hotel at 
Nanci was one of the gayest of the little court. His Protes- 
tantism was by no means austere. He was even known to 
regret that there were no French convents for noble damsels of 
the Protestant confession, as therq^ were across the Rhine, 
where his own two daughters might be bestowed out of the 
way. Mesdemoiselles de Saverne were ungainly in appear- 
ance, fierce and sour in temper, resembling, in these particu- 
lars, their brother Mor^s. le Baron de Barr. 

In his youth. Monsieur de Barr had served not without dis- 
tinction, being engaged against Messieurs the English at Hast- 
enbeck and Laufeldt, where he had shown both courage and 
capacity. His Protestantism prevented his promotion in the 
army. He left it, steadfast in his faith, but soured in- his tem- 
per. He did not care for whist or music, like his easy old 
father. His appearance at the count’s little suppers was as 
cheerful as a death’s-head at a feast. M. de Barr only fre- 
quented these entertainments to give pleasure to his young 
wife, who pined and was wretched in the solitary family man- 
sion of Saverne, where the Vicomte took up his residence when 
first married. 

He was of an awful temper, and subject to storms of pas- 
sion. Being a very conscientious man, he suffered extremely 
after one of these ebullitions of rage. Between his alternations 
of anger and remorse, his life was a sad one ; his household 
trembled before him, and especially the poor little wife whom 
he had brought out of her quiet country village to be the vic- 
tim of his rage and repentances. More than once she fled to 
the old Count of Saverne at Nanci, and the kindly selfish old 
gentleman used his feeble endeavors to protect his poor little 
daughter-in-law. Quickly after these quarrels letters would 
arrive, containing vows of the most abject repentance on the 
Baron’s part. These matrimonial campaigns followed a regular 
course. First rose the outbreak of temper ; then the lady’s 
flight ensued to papa-in-law at Nanci ; then came letters ex- 
pressive of grief ; then the repentant criminal himself arrived, 
whose anguish and cries of mea culpa were more insupportable 


DENIS DUVAL. 


59<5 

than his outbreaks of rage. After a few years, Madame de 
Barr lived almost entirely with her father-in-law at Nanci, and 
was scarcely seen in her husband’s gloomy mansion of Saverne. 

For some years no child was born of this most unhappy 
union. Just when poor King Stanislas came by his lamentable 
death (being burned at his own fire), the old Count de Saverne 
died, and his son found that he inherited little more than his 
father’s name and title of Saverne, the family estate being 
greatly impoverished by the late Count’s extravagant and indo- 
lent habits, and much weighed down by the portions gwarded 
to the Demoiselles de Saverne, the elderly sisters of the present 
elderly lord. 

The town house at Nanci was shut up for a while ; and the 
new Lord of Saverne retired to his castle with his sisters and 
his wife. With his Catholic neighbors the stern Protestant 
gentleman had little communion ; and the society which fre* 
quented his dull house chiefly consisted of Protestant clergy- 
men who came from the other side of the Rhine. Along its 
left bank, which had only become French territory of late years, 
the French and German languages were spoken indifferently ; 
in the latter language M. de Saverne was called the Herr von 
Zabern. • After his father’s death, Herr von Zabern may have 
melted a little, but he soon became as moody, violent, and ill- 
conditioned as ever the Herr von Barr had been. Saverne 
was a little country town, with the crumbling old Hotel de 
Saverne in the centre of the place, and a straggling street 
stretching on either side. Behind the house were melancholy 
gardens, squared and clipped after the ancient French fashion, 
and, beyond the garden wall, some fields and woods, part of 
the estate of the Saverne family. These fields and woods were 
fringed by another great forest, which had once been the prop- 
erty of the house of Saverne, but had been purchased from the 
late easy proprietor by Messeigneurs de Rohan, Princes of the 
Empire, of France, and the Church, Cardinals, and Archbishbps 
of Strasbourg, between whom and their gloomy Protestant 
neighbor there was no good-will. Not only questions of faith 
separated them, but questions of chasse. The Count de Sa- 
verne, who loved shooting, and beat his meagre woods for game 
with a couple of lean dogs, and a fowlingrpiece over his shoulder, 
sometimes came in sight of the grand hunting-parties of Mon- 
^eigneur the Cardinal, who went to the chase like a Prince as 
be was, with piqueurs and hornblowers, whole packs of dogs, 
and a troop of gentlemen in his uniform. Not seldom his 
Eminence’s keepers and M, (de Sayerne’s solitary garde-chasse 


THE HOUSE OF SAVERNE. 


597 


had quarrels. ‘^Tell your master that I will shoot any red-legs 
which come upon my land,” M. de Saverne said in one of these 
controversies, as he held up a partridge which he had just 
brought down ; and the keeper knew the moody nobleman 
would be true to his word. 

Two neighbors so ill-disposed towards one another were 
speedily at law ; and in the courts at Strasbourg a poor pro- 
vincial gentleman was likely to meet with scanty justice when 
opposed to such a powerful enemy as the Prince Archbishop 
of the province, one of the greatest noblemen of the king- 
dom. Boundary questions, in a land where there are no 
hedges, game, forest, and fishery questions — how can I tell, 
who am no lawyer, what set the gentlemen at loggerheads ? In 
later days I met one M. Georgel, an Abbe, who had been a 
secretary of the Prince Cardinal, and he told me that M. de 
Saverne was a headlong, violent, ill-conditioned little mauvais 
coiicheiir^ as they say in France, and ready to quarrel with or 
without a reason. 

These quarrels naturally took the Count de Saverne to his 
advocates and lawyers at Strasbourg, and he would absent him- 
self for days from home, where his poor wife was perhaps not 
sorry to be rid of him. It chanced, on one of these expeditions to 
the chief town of his province, that he fell in with a former com- , 
rade in his campaigns of Hastenbeck and Laufeldt, an officer 
of Soubise’s regiment, the Baron de la Motte.* La Motte had 
been destined to the Church, like many cadets of good family, 
but, his elder brother dying, he was released from the tonsure 
and the seminary, and entered the army under good protection. 
Mesdemoiselles de Saverne remembered this M. de la Motte at 
Nanci in old days. He bore the worst of characters; he was 
gambler, intriguer, duellist, profligate. I suspect that most 
gentlemen’s reputations came off ill under the tongues of these 
old ladies, and have heard of other countries where mesdemoiselles 
are equally hard to please. “ Well, have we not all our faults ? ” 

I imagine M. de Saverne saying, in a rage. ‘‘ Is there no such 
thing as calumny.? Are we never to repent, if we have been 
wrong ? I know he has led a wild youth. Others may have 
done as much. But prodigals have been reclaimed ere now, 
and I for my part will not turn my back on this one.” “Ah, I 
wish he had ! ” De la Motte said to me myself in later clays, 
“but it was his fate, his fate ! ” 

One day, then, the Count de Saverne returns home from 

* That unlucky Prince de Rohan was to suffer by another Delamotte, who, with his 
“ Valois” of a wife, played such a notorious part in the famous “diamond necklace ” busi* 
ness, but the two worthies were not, I believe, related. — D. D. 


DENIS DWAL. 


598 

Strasbourg with his new friend ; presents the Baron de la Motte 
to the ladies of his house, makes the gloomy place !is cheerful 
as he can for his guest, brings forth the best wine from his cave, 
and beats his best covers for game. I myself knew the Baron 
some years later; — a handsome, tall, sallow-faced man, with. a 
shifty eye, a soft voice, and a grand manner. Monsieur de 
Saverne for his part was short, black, and ill-favored, as I have 
heard my mother say. But Mrs. Duval did not love him, fancy- 
ing that he ill-treated her Biche. Where she disliked people, 
my worthy parent would never allow them a single good quality ; 
but she always averred that Monsieur de la Motte was a per- 
fect fine gentleman. 

The intimacy between these two gentlemen increased apace. 
M. de la Motte was ever welcome at Saverne : a room in the 
house was called his room : their visitor was an acquaintance 
of their enemy the Cardinal also, and would often come from 
the one chateau to the other. Laughingly he would tell how 
angry Monseigneur was with his neighbor. He wished he could 
make peace between the two houses. He gave quite good ad- 
vice to Monsieur de Saverne, and pointed out the danger he 
ran in provoking so powerful an adversary. Men had been im- 
prisoned for life for less reason. The Cardinal might get a 
leitre de cachet against his obstinate opponent. He could, 
besides, ruin Saverne with fines and law costs. The con- 
test between the two was quite unequal, and the weaker 
party must inevitably be crushed, unless these unhappy dis- 
putes should cease. As far as the ladies of the house dared 
speak, they coincided in the opinion of M. de la Motte, and 
were for submission and reconciliation with their neighbors. 
Madame de Saverne’s own relations heard of the feud, and im- 
plored the Count to bring it to an end. It was one of these, 
the Baron de Viomesnil, going to command in Corsica, who 
entreated M. de Saverne to accompany him on the campaign. 
Anywhere the Count was safer than in his own house with an 
implacable and irresistible enemy at his gate. M. de Saverne 
yielded to his kinsman’s importunities. He took down his 
sword and pistols of Laufeldt from the wall, where they had 
hung for twenty years. He set the affairs of his house in order, 
and after solemnly assembling his family, and on his knees con- 
fiding it to the gracious protection of heaven, he left home to 
join the suite of the French General. 

A few weeks after he left home — several years after his 
marriage — his wife wrote to inform him that she was very likely 
to be a mother. The stern man, who had been very unhappy 


THE HOUSE OF SA PHENE. 


599 


previously, and chose to think that his wife’s barrenness was a 
punishment of Heaven for some crime of his or hers, was very 
much moved by this announcement. I have still at home a 
German Bible which he used, and in which is written in the 
German a very affecting prayer composed by him, imploring 
the Divine blessing upon the child about to be born, and hop- 
ing that this infant might grow in grace, and bring peace and 
love and unity into the household. It would appear that he 
made no doubt that he should have a son. His hope and aim 
were to save in every possible way for his child. I have read 
many letters of his which he sent from Corsica to his wife, and 
which she kept. They were full of strange minute orders, as 
to the rearing and education of this son that was to be born. 
He enjoined saving amounting to niggardliness in his house- 
hold, and calculated how much might be put away in ten, in 
twenty years, so that the coming heir might have a property 
worthy of his ancient name. In case he should fall in action, 
he laid commands upon his wife to pursue a system of the most 
rigid economy, so that the child at coming of age might be able 
to appear creditably in the world. In these letters, I remem- 
ber, the events of the campaign were dismissed in a very few 
words ; the main part of the letters consisted of prayers, specu- 
lations, and prophecies regarding the child, sermons couched 
in the language of the writer’s stern creed. When the child 
was born, and a girl appeared in place of the boy, upon whom 
the poor father had set his heart, I hear the family were so dis- 
mayed, that they hardly dared to break the news to the chief 
of the house. 

Whb told me ? The same man who said he wished he had 
never seen M. de Saverne : the man for whom the unhappy 
gentleman conceived a warm friendship; — the man who was to 
bring a mysterious calamity upon those whom, as I do think, 
and in his selfish way, he loved sincerely, and he spoke at a 
time when he could have little desire to deceive me. 

The lord of the castle is gone on the campaign. The chate- 
laine is left alone in her melancholy tower with her two dismal 
duennas. My good mother, speaking in latter days about these 
matters took up the part of her Biche against the Ladies of 
Barr and their brother, and always asserted that the t}u*anny of 
the duennas, and the meddling, and the verbosity, and the ill- 
temper of M. de Saverne himself, brought about the melancholy 
events which now presently ensued. The Count de Saverne 
was a little man (my mother said) who loved to hear himself 
talk, and who held forth from morning till night. His life was 


6oo 


DEN/S DUVAL. 


a fuss. He would weigh the coffee, and count the lumps of 
sugar, and have a finger in every pie in his frugal house. Night 
and morning he preached sermons to his family, and he con- 
tinued to preach when not e?i chairc^ laying down the law upon 
all subjects, untiringly voluble. Cheerfulness in the company of 
such a man was hypocrisy. Mesdames de Iharr had to disguise 
weariness, to assume an . air of contentment, and to appear to 
be interested when the Count preached. As for the Count's 
sisters, they were accustomed to listen to their brother and 
lord with respectful submission. They had a hundred domestic 
occupations ; they had baking and boiling, and pickling, and 
washing, and endless embroidery; the life of the little chateau 
was quite supportable to them. They knew no better. Even 
in their father’s days at Nanci, the ungainly women kept 
pretty much aloof from the world, and were little better than 
domestic servants in waiting on Monseigneur. 

And Madame de Saverne, on her first entrance into the 
family, accepted the subordinate position meekly enough. She 
spun and she bleached, and she worked great embroideries, 
and busied herself about her house, and listened demurely 
whilst the Monsieur le Compte was preaching. But then there 
came a time when her duties interested her no more, when his 
sermons became especially wearisome, when sharp words passed 
between her and her lord, and the poor thing exhibited symp- 
toms of impatience and revolt. And with the revolt arose 
awful storms and domestic battles ; and after battles, submis- 
sion, reconciliation, forgiveness, hypocrisy. 

It has been said that Monsieur de Saverne loved the sound 
of his own croaking voice, and to hold forth to his own congre- 
gation. Night after night he and his friend M. de la Motte ^ 
would have religious disputes together, in which the Huguenot 
gentleman flattered himself that he constantly had the better 
of the ex-pupil of the seminary. I was not present naturally, 
not setting my foot on French ground until five-and-twenty 
years after, but I can fancy Madame the Countess sitting at 
her tambour frame, and the old duenna ladies at their cards, 
and the combat of the churches going on between these two 
champions in the little old saloon of the Hotel de Saverne. 

As I Hope for pardon,” M. de la Motte said to me at rf 
supreme moment of his life, “ and to meet those whom on 
earth I loved, and made unhappy, no wrong passed between 
Clarisse and me, save that wrong which consisted in disguising 
from her husband the regard we had for one another. Once, 
tv:ice, thrice, I went away from their house, but that unhnppv 


THE HOUSE OE SA VERNE. 6oi 

Saverne would bring me back, and I was only too glad to re- 
turn. I would let him talk away for hours — I own it — so that 
I might be near Clarisse. I had to answer from time to time, 
and rubbed up my old seminary learning to reply to his sen 
mons. I must often have spoken at random, for my thoughts 
were far away from the poor man’s radotagcs^ and he could no 
more change my convictions than he could change the color of 
my skin. Hours and hours thus passed away. They would 
have been intolerably tedious to others : they were not so to 
me. I preferred that gloomy little chateau to the finest place 
in Europe. To see Clarisse, was all I asked. Denis ! There 
is a power irresistible impelling all of us. From the moment I 
first set eyes on her, I knew she was my fate. I shot an Eng- 
lish grenadier at Hastenbeck, who would have bayoneted poor 
Saverne but for me. As I lifted him up froifi the ground, I 
thought, ‘ I shall have to repent of ever having seen that man.’ 

I felt the same thing, Duval, when I saw you.” And as the 
unhappy gentleman spoke, I remembered how I for my part 
felt a singular and unpleasant sensation as of terror and ap- 
proaching evil when first I looked at that handsome, ill-omened 
face. 

I thankfully belie've the words which M. de la Motte spoke 
to me at a time when he could have no cause to disguise the 
truth ; and am assured of the innocence of the Countess de 
Saverne. Poor lady ! if she erred in thought, she had to pay 
so awful a penalty for her crime, that we humbly hope it has 
been forgiven her. She was not true to her husband, though 
she did him no wrong. If, while trembling before him, she yet 
had dissimulation enough to smile and be merry, I suppose no 
preacher or husband would be very angry with her for that hy- 
pocrisy. I have seen a slave in the West Indies soundly cuffed 
for looking sulky: we expect our negroesdo be obedient and 
to be happy too. 

Now when M. de Saverne went away to Corsica, I suspect 
he was strongly advised to take that step by his friend M. de 
la Motte. When he was gone, M. de la Motte did not present 
himself at the Plotel de Saverne, where an old schoolfellow of 
his, a pastor and preacher from Kehl, on the German Rhine 
bank, was installed in command of the little garrison, from 
which its natural captain had been obliged to withdraw ; but 
there is no doubt that poor Clarisse deceived this gentleman 
and her two sisters-in-law, and acted towards them with a very 
culpable hypocrisy. 

Although there was a deadly feud between the two cha- . 


6o2 


DENIS DUVAL. 


teaiix of Saverne — namely, the Cardinal’s new-built castle in 
the Park, and the Count’s hotel in the little town — yet each 
house knew more or less of the other’s doings. When the 
Prince Cardinal and his court were at Saverne, Mesdemoi- 
selles de Barr were kept perfectly well informed of all the fes^ 
tivities whicli they did not share. In our little Fareport here, 
do not the Miss Frys, my neighbors, know what I have for 
dinner, the amount of my income, the price of my wife’s last 
gown, and the items of my son’s. Captain Scapegrace’s, tailor’s 
bill. No doubt the ladies of Barr were equally well informed 
of the doings of the Prince Coadjutor and his court. Such 
gambling, such splendor, such painted hussies from Strasbourg, 
such plays, masquerades, and orgies as took place in that 
castle 1 Mesdemoiselles had the very latest particulars of all 
these horrors, and the Cardinal’s castle was to them as the 
castle of a wicked ogre. From her little dingy tower at night 
Madame de Saverne could look out, and see the Cardinal’s 
sixty palace windows all a flame. Of summer nights, gusts of 
unhallowed music would be heard from the great house, where 
dancing festivals, theatrical pieces even, were performed. 
Though Madame de Saverne was forbidden by her husband to 
frequent those assemblies, the townspeople were up to the 
palace from time to time, and Madame could not help hearing 
of the doings there. In spite of the Count’s prohibition, his 
gardener poached in the Cardinal’s woods ; one or two of the 
servants were smuggled in to see a fete or a ball ; then Ma- 
dame’s own woman went; then Madame herself began to have 
a wicked longing to go, as Madame’s first ancestress had for 
the fruit of the forbidden tree. Is not the aj^ple always ripe on 
that tree, and does not the tempter forev^er invite you to pluck 
and eat 1 Madame de Saverne had a lively little waiting-maid, 
whose bright eyes loved to look into neighbors’ parks and gar- 
dens, and who had found favor with one of the domestics of the 
Prince Archbishop. This woman brought news to her mistress 
of the feasts, balls, banquets, nay, comedies, which were per- 
formed at the Prince Cardinal’s. The Prince’s gentlemen went 
hunting in his uniform. Fie was served. on plate, and a lackey 
in his livery stood behind each guest. lie had tlie French 
comedians over from Strasbourg. Oh ! that M. de Molitu'c 
was a droll gentleman, and how grand the Cid ” was ! 

Now, to see these plays and balls, Martha, the maid, must 
have had intelligence in and out of both the houses of Saverne. 
She must have deceived those old dragons, Mesdemoiselles. 
Sh'e must have had means of creeping out at the gate, and 


THE HOUSE OF SA VERNE._ 603 

silently creeping back again. She told her mistress everything' 
she saw, acted the plays for her, and described the dresses of 
the ladies and gentlemen. Madame de Saverne was never tired 
of hearing her maid’s stories. When Martha was going to a 
fete, Madame lent her some little ornament to wear, and yet 
when Pasteur Schnorr and Mesdemoiselles talked of the , pro- 
ceedings at Great Saverne, and as if the fires of Gomorrah 
were ready to swallow up that palace, and all within it, the Lady 
of Saverne sat demurely in silence, and listened to their croak» 
ing and sermons. Listened ? The pastor exhorted the house- 
hold, the old ladies talked night after night, and poor Madame 
de Saverne never heeded. Her thoughts were away in Great 
Saverne ; her spirit was for ever hankering about those woods. 
Letters came now and again from M. de Saverne, with the army. 
They had been engaged with the enemy. Very good. He was 
unhurt. Heaven be praised ! And then the grim husband read 
his poor little wife a grim sermon ; and the grim sisters and 
the chaplain commented on it. Once, after an action at Calvi, 
Monsieur de Saverne, who was always specialty lively in mo- 
ments of danger, described how narrowly he had escaped with 
his life, and the chaplain took advantage of the circumstance, 
and delivered to the household a prodigious discourse on death, 
on dang.er, on preservation here and hereafter, and alas, and 
alas ! poor Madame de Saverne found that she had not listened 
to a word of the homily. Her thoughts were not with the 
preacher, nor with the captain of Viomesnil’s regiment before 
Calvi ; they were in the palace at Great Saverne, with the balls, 
and the comedies, and the music, and the fine gentlemen from 
Paris and Strasbourg, and out of the Empire beyond the Rhine, 
who frequented the Prince’s entertainments. 

What happened where the wicked spirit was whispering, 
‘‘ Eat,” and the tempting apple hung within reach? One night 
when the household was at rest, Madame de Saverne, muffied 
in cloak and calash, with a female companion similarly dis- 
guised, tripped silently out of the back gate of the Hotel de 
Saverne, found a cariole in waiting, with a driver who appar- 
ently knew the road and the passengers he was . to carry, and 
after half an hour’s drive through the straight avenues of the 
park of Great Saverne, alighted at the gates of the chateau, 
where the driver gave up the reins of the cariole to a domestic 
in waiting, and, by doors and passages which seemed perfectly 
well known to him, the coachman and the two women entered 
the castle together and found their way to a gallery in a great 
hall, in which many lords and ladies were seated, and at the end 


6o4 


DENIS DUVAL. 


of which was a stage, with a curtain before it. Men and women 
came backwards and forwards on this stage, and recited dia- 
logue in verses. O mercy ! it was a comedy they were acting, 
one of those wicked delightful plays which she was forbidden 
to see, and which she was longing to behold ! After the comedy 
was to be a ball, in which the actors would dance in their stage 
habits. Some of the people were in masks already, and in that 
box near to the stage, surrounded by a little crowd of dominoes, 
•sat Monseigneur the Prince Cardinal himself. Madame de 
Saverne had seen him and his cavalcade sometimes returning 
from hunting. She would have been as much puzzled to say 
what the play was about as to give an account of Pasteur 
Schnorr’s sermon a few hours before. But Frontin made jokes 
with his master Damis ; and Geronte locked up the doors of 
his house, and went to bed grumbling ; and it grew quite dark, 
and Mathurine flung a rope-ladder out of window, and she and 
her mistress Ehnire came down the ladder ; and Frontin held 
it, and Elmire, with a little cry, fell into the arms of Mons. 
Damis ; and master and man, and maid and mistress, sang a 
merry chorus together, in which human frailty was very cheer- 
fully depicted ; and when they had done, away they went to 
the gondola which was in waiting at the canal stairs, and so 
good-night. And when old Geronte, wakened up by the dis- 
turbance, at last came forth in his nightcap, and saw the boat 
paddling away out of reach, you may be sure that the audience 
laughed at the poor impotent raging old wretch. It was a very 
merry play indeed, and is still popular and performed in E ranee 
and elsewhere. 

After the play came a ball. Would Madame dance 't Would 
the noble Countess of Saverne dance with a coachman } There 
were others below on the dancing floor dressed in mask and 
domino as she was. Who ever said she had a mask and dom- 
ino ? You see it has been stated that she was muffled in cloak 
and calash. Well, is not a domino a cloak ? and has it not a 
hood or calash appended to it } and,, pray, do not women wear 
masks at home as well as at the Ridotto ? 

Another question arises here. A high-born lady entrusts 
herself to a charioteer, who drives her to the castle of a prince 
her husband’s enemy. Who was her companion ? Of course 
he could be no other than that luckless Monsieur de la Motte. 
Fie had never been very far away from Madame de Saverne 
since her husband’s departure. In spite of chaplains, and duen- 
nas, and guards, and locks and keys, he had found means of com- 
municating with her. How ? By what lies and stratagems ? 


THE HOUSE OF SA VERNE. 


605 

By what arts and bribery ? These poor people are both gone 
to their account. Both suffered a fearful punishment. I will 
not describe their follies, and donh care to be Mons. Figaro, 
and hold the ladder and lantern, while the count scales Re- 
sina’s window. Poor, frightened erring soul ! She suffered an 
awful penalty for what, no doubt, was a great wrong. 

A child almost, she was married to M. de Saverne, without 
knowing him, without liking him, because her parents ordered 
her, and because she was bound to comply with their will.. 
She was sold, and went to her slavery. She lived at first 
obediently enough. If she shed tears, they were dried ; if she 
quarrelled with her husband, the two were presently reconciled. 
She bore no especial malice, and was as gentle, subordinate a 
slave as ever you shall see in Jamaica or Barbadoes. Nobody’s 
tears were sooner dried, as I should judge : none would be 
more ready to kiss the hand of the overseer who drove her. 
But you don’t expect sincerity and subservience too. I know, 
for my part, a lady who only obeys when she likes : and faith ! 
it may be it is / who am the hypocrite, and have to tremble, 
and smile, and swindle before her. 

When Madame de Saverne’s time was nearly come, it was 
ordered that she should go to Strasburg, where the best medical 
assistance is to be had : and here, six months after her husband’s 
departure for Corsica, their child, Agnes de Saverne, was born. 

Did secret terror and mental disquietude and remorse now 
fall on the unhappy lady She wrote to my mother, at this 
time her only confidante (and yet not a confidante of all !) — 
“ O Ursule ! I dread this event. Perhaps I shall die. I think 
I hope I shall. In these long days, since he has been away, I 
have got so to dread his return, that I believe I shall go mad 
when I see him. Do you know, after the battle before Calvi, 
when I read that many officers had been killed, I thought, is 
M. de Saverne killed ? And I read the list down, and his name 
was not there : and, my sister, my sister, I was not glad ! Have 
I come to be such a monster as to wish my own husband * * * 
No. I wish I was. 1 can’t speak to M. Schnorr about this. 
He is so stupid. He doesn’t understand me. He is like my 
husband ; for ever preaching me his sermons. 

Listen, Ursule ! Speak it to nobody ! I have been to 
hear a sermon. Oh, it was indeed divine ! It was not from 
one of our pastors. Oh, how they weary me ! It was from a 
good bishop of the French Church — not our German Church — 
the Bishop of Amiens — who happens to be here on a visit to 
the Cardinal Prince. The bishop’s name is //. de la Motte, 


6o6 


DENIS DUVAL, 


He is a relative of a gentleman of whom we have seen a great 
deal lately — of a great friend of M. cle Saverne, who saved 7ny 
husband life in the battle M. de S. is always talking about. 

‘‘ How beautiful the cathedral is ! It was night when I 
went. The church was lighted like the stars, and the music 
was like Heave?i, Ah, how different from M. Schnorr at home, 
from — from somebody else at my new home who is always 
preaching — that is, when he is at home ! Poor man ! I won- 
der whether he preaches to them in Corsica ! I pity them if 
he does. Don’t mention the cathedral if you write to me. 
The dragons don’t know anything about it. How they would 
scold if they did ! Oh, how they ennuyent me, the dragons ! 
Behold them ! They think I am writing to my husband. Ah, 
Ursule ! When I write to him, I sit for hours before the paper. 
I say nothing ; and what I say seems to be lies. Whereas 
when I write to you, my pen runs — runs ! The paper is covered 
before I think I have begun. So it is when I write to * * * 
I do believe that villain drag07i is peering at my note with her 
spectacles ! Yes, my good sister, I am writing to M. le Comte ! ” 

To this letter a postscript is added, as by the countess’s 
command, in the German language, in which Madame de 
Saverne’s medical attendant announces the birth of a daughter, 
and that the child and mother are doing well. 

That daughter is sitting before me now — with spectacles on 
nose too — very placidly spelling the Portsmouth paper, where I 
hope she will soon read the promotion of Monsieur Scapegrace, 
her son. She has exchanged her noble name for mine, which 
is only humble and honest. My dear ! your eyes are not so 
bright as once I remember them, and the raven locks are 
streaked with silver. To shield thy head from dangers has 
been the blessed chance and duty of my life. When I turn 
towards her, and see her moored in our harbor of rest, after our 
life’s checkered voyage, calm and happy, a sense of immense 
gratitude fills my being, and my heart says a hymn of praise. 

The first days of the life of Agnes de Saverne were marked 
by incidents which were strangely to influence her career. 
Around her little cradle a double, a triple tragedy was about to 
be enacted. Strange that death, crime, revenge, remorse, 
mystery, should attend round the cradle of one so innocent and 
pure — as pure and innocent, I pray Heaven now, as upon that 
day when, at scarce a month old, the adventure of her life 
began. 

That letter to my mother, written by Madame de Saverne 
on the eve of her child’s birth, and finished by her attendant. 


THE HOUSE OF SA VERNE. 


607 

bears date November 25, 1768. A month later Martha See- 
bach, her attendant, wrote (in German) that her mistress had 
suffered frightfully from fever : so much so that her reason left 
her for some time, and her life was despaired of. Mademoiselles 
de Barr were for bringing up the child by hand ; but not being 
versed in nursery practices, the infant had ailed sadly until re- 
stored to its mother. Madame de Saverne was now tranquil. 
Madame was greatly better. She had suffered most fearfully. 
In her illness she was constantly calling for her foster-sister to 
protect her from some danger, which, as she appeared to fancy, 
menaced Madame. 

Child as I was at the time when these letters were passing, 
I remember the arrival of the next. It lies in yonder drawer, 
9.nd was written by a poor fevered hand which is now cold, in 
ink which is faded after fifty years.* I remember my mother 
screaming out in German, which she always spoke when strongly 
moved, “ Dear Heaven, my child is mad — is mad ! ’’ And in- 
deed that poor faded letter contains a strange rhapsody. 

“ Ursule ! ” she wrote (I do not care to give at length the 
words of the poor wandering creature), “ after my child was 
born the demons wanted to take her from me. But I struggled 
and kept her quite close, and now they can no longer hurt her. 
I took her to church. Martha went with me, and He was 
there — he always is — to defend me from the demons, and I had 
her christened Agnes, and I was christened Agnes too. Think 
of my being christened at twenty-two! Agnes the*First, and 
Agnes the Second. But though my name is changed, I am 
always the same to my Ursule, and my name now is, Agnes 
Clarisse de Saverne, born de Viomesnil.’’ 

She had actually, when not quite mistress of her own reason, 
been baptized into the Roman Catholic Church with her child. 
Was she sane when she so acted? Had she thought of the 
step before taking it ? Had she known Catholic clergymen at 
Saverne, or had she other reasons for her conversion than those 
which were furnished in the conversations which took place 
between her husband and M. de la Motte ? In this letter the 
poor lady says, “ Yesterday two persons came to my bed with 
gold crowns round their heads. One was dressed like a priest ; 
one was beautiful and covered with arrows, and they said, ‘ We 
are Saint Fabian and Saint Sebastian ; and to-morrow is the 
day of St. Agnes : and she will be at church to receive you 
there.” 

* The memoirs appear to have been written in the years ^20, ’21. Mr. Duval was 
gazetted Rear-Admiral and K. C. C. in the promotions on the accession of King George 


6o8 


DENIS DUVAL 


What the real case was I never knew. The Protestant 
clergyman whom I saw in after clays could only bring his book 
to show that he had christened the infant, not Agnes, but 
Augustine. Martha Seebach is dead. La Motte, when I con- 
versed with him, did not touch upon this part of the poor lady’s 
history. I conjecture that the images and pictures which she 
had seen in the churches operated upon her fevered brain ; 
that, having procured a Roman Calendar and Missal, she knew 
saints’ days and feasts ; and, not yet recovered from her 
delirium or quite responsible for the actions which she per- 
formed, she took her child to the cathedral, and was baptized 
there. 

And now, ho doubt, the poor lady had to practise more de- 
ceit and concealment. The “ demons ” were the old maiden 
sisters left to watch over her. She had to hoodwink these. 
Had she not done so before — when she went to the Cardinal’s 
palace at Saverne Wherever the poor thing moved I fancy 
those ill-omened eyes of La Motte glimmering upon her out of 
the darkness. Poor Eve — not lost quite, I pray and think, — 
but that serpent was ever trailing after her, and she was to die 
poisoned in its coil. Who shall understand the awful ways of 
Fate A year after that period regarding which I write, a 
lovely Imperial Princess rode through the Strasbourg streets 
radiant and blushing, amidst pealing bells, roaring cannon, gar- 
lands and banners, and shouting multitudes. Did any one 
ever thinly that the last stage of that life’s journey was to be 
taken in a hideous tumbrel, and to terminate on a scaffold ? 
The life of Madame de Saverne was to last but a year more, 
and her end to be scarcely less tragical. 

Many physicians have told me how often after the birth of 
a child the brain of a mother will be affected. Madame de 
Saverne remained for some time in this febrile condition, if not 
unconscious of her actions, at least not accountable for all of 
them. At the end of three months she woke up as out of a 
dream, having a dreadful recollection of the circumstances 
which had passed. Under what hallucinations we never shall 
know, or yielding to what persuasions, the wife of a stern 
Protestant nobleman had been to a Roman Catholic church, 
and had been christened there with her child. She never 
could recall that step. A great terror came over her as she 
thought of it — a great terror and a hatred of her husband, the 
cause of all her grief and her fear. She began to look out lest he 
should return ; she clutched her child to her breast, and barred 
and bolted all doors for fear people should rob her of the infant. 


7 HE HOUSE OF SA VERNE. 609 

The Protestant chaplain, the Protestant sisters-in-law, looked on 
with dismay and anxiety ; they thought justly that Madame de 
Saverne was not yet quite restored to her reason ; they consulted 
the physicians, who agreed with them ; who arrived, who pre- 
scribed ; who were treated by the patient with scorn, laughter, 
insult sometimes ; sometimes with tears and terror, according 
to her wayward mood. Her condition was most puzzling. 
The sisters wrote from time to time guarded reports respecting 
her to her husband in Corsica. He, for his part, replied in- 
stantly with volumes of his wonted verbose commonplace. He 
acquiesced in the decrees of Fate, when informed that a 
daughter was born to him ; and presently wrote reams’ of in- 
structions regarding her nature, dress, and physical and relig- 
ious training. The child was called Agnes ? He would have 
preferred Barba.ra, as being his mother’s name. I remember 
in some of the poor gentleman’s letters there were orders about 
the child’s pap, and instructions as to the nurse’s diet. He 
was coming home soon. The Corsicans had been defeated 
in every action. Had he been a Catholic he would have been 
a knight of the King’s orders long ere this. M. de Viomesnil 
hoped still to get for him the order of Military Merit (the 
Protestant order which his Majesty had founded ten years pre- 
viously). These letters (which were subsequently lost by an 
accident at sea"^) spoke modestly enough of the Count’s per- 
sonal adventures. I hold him to have been a very brave man, 
and only not tedious and prolix when he spoke of his own merits 
and services. 

The Count’s letters succeeded each other post after post. 
The end of the war was approaching, and with it his return 
was assured. . He exulted in the thought of seeing his child, 
and leading her in the way she should go — the right way, the 
true way. As the mother’s brain cleared, her terror grtw 
greater — her terror and loathing of her husband. She could 
not bear the thought of his return, or to face him with the con- 
fession which she knew she must make. His wife turn Catholic 
and baptize his child ? She felt he would kill her, did he know 
what had happened. She went to the Priest who had baptized 
her. M. Georgel (his Eminence’s secretary) knew her husband. 
The Prince Cardinal was so great and powerful a prelate, 
Georgel said, that he would protect her against all the wrath of 
• all the Protestants in France. I think she must have had inter- 
views with the Prince Cardinal, though there is no account of 
them in any letter to my mother. 

* The letters from ATadavie de Sa7<erne to my motlier at Winchelsea were not subject 
to this mishap, but were always kept by Madame JJuval in lier own escritoire. 


6io 


DENIS DUVAL. 


The campaign was at an end. M. de Vaux, M. de Viomesnil, 
both wrote in highly eulogistic terms of the conduct of the 
Count de Saverne. Their good wishes would attend him 
home ; Protestant as he was their best interest should be ex- 
erteci in his behalf. 

The day of the Count’s return approached. The day ar- 
rived : I can fancy the brave gentleman with beating heart 
ascending the steps of the homely lodging where his family 
have been living at Strasbourg ever since the infant’s birth. 
How he has dreamt about that child : prayed for her and his 
wife at night-watch and bivouac — prayed for them as he stood, 
calm ifiid devout, in the midst of battfe. * * * * 

When he enters the room, he sees only two frightened 
domestics and the two ghastly faces of his scared old sisters. 

“ Where are Clarisse and the child ? he asks. 

The child and the mother were gone. The aunts knew not 
where. 

A stroke of palsy could scarcely have smitten the unhappy 
gentleman more severely than did the news which his trembling 
family was obliged to give him. In later days I saw M. 
Schnorr, the German pastor from Kehl, who has been mentioned 
already, -and who was installed in the Count’s house as tutor 
and chaplain during the absence of the master. “ When Ma- 
dame de Saverne went to make her coucJier at Strasbourg ” (M. 
Schnorr said to me), “ I retired to my duties at Kehl, glad 
enough to return to the quiet of my home, for the noble lady’s 
reception of me was anything but gracious ; and I had to en- 
dure much female sarcasm and many unkind words from Ma- 
dame la Comtesse, whenever, as in duty bound, I presented 
myself at her table. Sir, that most unhappy lady used to make 
sport of me before her domestics. She used to call me her 
jailer. She used to mimic my ways of eating and drinking. 
She would yawn in the midst of my exhortations, and cry out, 
“ O que c’est bete ! ’ and when I gave out a Psalm, would utter 
little cries, and say, ‘Pardon me, M. Schnorr, but you sing so 
out of tune you make my head ache ; ’ so that I could scarcely 
continue that portion of the service, the veiy^ domestics laugh- 
ing at me when I began to sing. My life was a martyrdom, 
but I bore my tortures meekly, out of a sense of duty and my 
love for M. le Comte. When her ladyship kept her chamber I 
used to wait almost daily upon Mesdemoiselles the Count’s 
sisters, to ask news of her and her child. I christened the 
infant ; but her mother was too ill to be present, and sent me 
out word by Mademoiselle Martha that she should call the child 


THE HOUSE OF SA VERNE, 


6i I 


Agnes, though I might name it' what I pleased. This was on 
the 2 1 St January, and I remeniber being struck, because in the 
Roman Calendar the feast of St. Agnes is celebrated on that 
day. 

“ Haggard and actually grown gray, from a black man 
which he was, my poor lord came to me with wildness and 
agony of grief in all his features and actions, to announce to 
me that Madame the Countess had fled, taking her infant with 
her. And he had a scrap of paper with him, over which he 
wept and raged as one demented ; now pouring out fiercer im- 
precations, now bursting into passionate tears and cries, calling 
upon his wife, his darling, his prodigal, to come back, tc^ bring 
him his child, when all should be forgiven. As he thus spoke 
his screams and groans were so piteous, that I myself was quite 
unmanned, and my mother, who keeps house for me (and who 
happened to be listening at the door), was likewise greatly 
alarmed by my poor lord’s passion of grief. And when I read 
on that paper that my lady countess had left the faith to which 
our fathers gloriously testified in the midst of trouble, slaughter, 
persecution, and bondage, I was scarcely less shocked than my 
good lord himself. 

“ We crossed the bridge to Strasbourg back again and went 
to the Cathedral Church, and entering there, we saw the Abbe 
Georgel coming out of a chapel where he had been to perform 
his devotions. The Abbe, who knew me, gave a ghastly smile 
as he recognized me, and for a pale man, his cheek blushed up 
a little when I said, ^^This is Monsieur the Comte de Saverne.’ 

“ ‘ Where is she ? ’ asked my poor lord, clutching the Abbe’s 
arm. 

“ ‘ Who ? ’ asked the Abbe, stepping back a little. 

“ ‘ Where is my child ? where is my wife ? ’ cries the Count. 

‘ Silence, Monsieur ! ’ says the Abbe. ‘ Do you know in 
whose house you are "I ’ and the chant from the altar, where 
the service was being performed, came upon us, and smote my 
poor lord as though a shot had struck him. We were standing, 
he tottering against a pillar in the nave, close by. the christen- 
ing font, and over my lord’s head was a picture of Saint Agnes. 

‘‘The agony of the poor gentleman could not but toivch any 
one who witnessed it. ‘ M. le Comte,’ says the Abbe, ‘ I feel 
for you. This great surprise has come upon you unprepared — 
I — I pray that it may be for your good.’ 

“ ‘ You know, then, what has happened ? ’ asked M. de 
Saverne ; and the Abbe was obliged to stammer a confession 
that he did know what had occurred. He was, in fact, the 


6i2 


DENIS DUVAL, 


very man who had performed the rite which separated my um 
happy lady from the church of her fathers. 

“ ‘ Sir,’ he said, with some spirit, ‘ this was a service which 
no clergyman could refuse. I would to heaven. Monsieur, that 
you, too, might be brought to ask it from me.’ 

“ The poor Count, with despair in his face, asked to see 
the register which confirmed the news, and there we saw that on 
the 2 ist January, 1769, being the Feast of St. Agnes, the noble 
lady, Clarisse, Countess of Saverne, born de Viomesnil, aged 
twenty-two years, and Agnes, only daughter of the same Count 
of Saverne and Clarisse his wife, were baptized and received 
into the Church in the presence of two witnesses (clerics) whose 
names were signed. 

“ The poor Count knelt over the registry book with an awful 
grief in his face, and in a mood which I heartily pitied. He 
bent down, uttering what seemed an imprecation rather than a 
prayer, and at this moment it chanced the service at the chief 
altar was concluded, and Monseigneur and his suite of clergy 
came into the sacristy. Sir, the Count de Saverne, starting up, 
clutching his sword in his hand, and shaking his fist at the . 
Cardinal, uttered a wild speech calling down imprecations upon 
the church of which the prince was a chief : ‘ Where is my lamb 
that you have taken from me ? ’ he said, using the language of 
the Prophet towards the King who had despoiled him. 

“The Cardinal haughtily said the conversion of Madame de 
Saverne was of heaven, and no act of his, and, adding, ‘ Bad 
neighbor as you have been to me, sir, I wish you so well that I 
hope you may follow her.’ 

“ At this the Count, losing all patience, made a violent attack 
upon the Church of Rome, denounced the Cardinal, and called 
down maledictions upon his head ; said that a day should come 
when his abominable pride should meet with a punishment 
and fall ; and spoke, as, in fact, the poor gentleman was able 
to do only too readily and volubly, against Rome and all its 
errors. 

“ The Prince Louis de Rohan replied with no little dignity, 
as I own. He said that such words in such a place were offen- 
sive and out of all reason : that it only depended on him to 
have M. de Saverne arrested, and punished for blasphemy and 
insult to the Church : but that, pitying the Count’s unhappy 
condition, the Cardinal would forget the hasty and insolent 
words he had uttered — as he would know how to defend Madame 
de Saverne and her child after the righteous step which she had 
taken. And he swept out of the sacristy with his suite, and 


THE HOUSE OF SA VEHNE, 613 

passed through the door which leads into his palace, leaving 
my poor count still in his despair and fury. 

‘‘ As he spoke with those Scripture phrases which M. de 
Saverne ever had at command, I remember how the Prince 
Cardinal tossed up his head and smiled. I wonder whether he 
thought of the words when his own day of disgrace came, and 
the fatal affair of the diamond necklace which brought him to 
ruin.’’ * 

Not without difficulty ” (M. Schnorr resumed) “ I induced 
the poor Count to quit the church where his wife’s apostasy 
had been performed. The outer gates and walls are decorated 
with numberless sculptures of saints of the Roman Calendar : 
and for a minute or two the poor man stood onThe threshold 
shputing imprecations in the sunshine, and calling down woe 
upon France and Rome. I hurried him away. Such language 
was dangerous, and could bring no good to either of us. He 
was almost a madman when I conducted him back to his home, 
where the ladies his sisters, scared with his wild looks, besought 
me not to leave him. 

Again he went into the room which his wife and child had 
inhabited, and, as he looked at the -relics of both which still 
were left there, gave way to bursts of grief which were pitiable 
indeed to witness. I speak of what happened near forty years 
ago, and remember the scene as though yesterday ; the pas- 
sionate agony of the poor gentleman, the sobs *^nd prayers. 
On a chest of drawers there was a little cap belonging to the 
infant. He seized it : kissed it : wept over it : calling upon 
the mother to bring the child back and he would forgive all. 
He thrust the little cap into his breast : opened every drawer, 
book, and closet, seeking for some indications of the fugitives. 
My opinion was, and that even of the ladies, sisters of M. le. 
Comte, that Madame had taken refuge in a convent with the 
child, that the Cardinal knew where she was, poor and friend- 
less, and that the Protestant gentleman would in vain seek for 
her. Perhaps when tired of that place — I for my part thought 
Mctftme la Comtesse a light-minded, wilful person, who certainly 
had no vocation^ as the Catholics call it, for a religious life — I 
thought she might come out after a while, and gave my patron 
such consolation as I could devise, upon this faint hope. He 
who was all forgiveness at one minute, was all wrath at the 
next. He would rather see his child dead than receive her as 

* My informant, Protestant though he was, did not, as I remember^ speak with very 
much asperity against the Prince Cardinal, He said that the prince lived an edifying life 
after his fall, succoring the poor, and doing everything in his power to defend the cause of 
royalty. — D. D. 


DENIS DUVAL. 


614 

a Catholic. He would go to the King, surrounded by harlots 
as he was, and ask for justice. There were still Protestant 
gentlemen left in France, whose spirit was not altogether trodden 
down, and they would back him in demanding reparation for 

this outrage. • • j 

“ I had some vague suspicion, which, however, I dismissed 
from my mind as unworthy, that there might be a third party ^ 
cognizant of Madame’s flight ; and this was a gentleman, once 
a great favorite of M. le Comte, and in whom I myself was 
not a little interested. Three or four days after the Comte de 
Saverne went away to the war, as I was meditating on a sermon 
which I proposed to deliver, walking at the back of my lord’s 
house of Saverne, in the fields which skirt the wood where the 
•Prince Cardinal’s great Schloss stands, I saw this gentleman 
with a gun over his shoulder, and recognized him — the Cheva- 
lier de la Motte, the very person who had saved the life of M. 
de Saverne in the campaign against the English. 

‘‘ M. de la Motte said he was staying with the Cardinal, and 
trusted that the ladies of Saverne were well. He' sent his re- 
spectful compliments to them : in a laughing way said he had 
been denied the door when he came to a visit, which he thought 
was an unkind act towards an old comrade ; and at the same 
time expressed his sorrow at the Count’s departure— ' for, Herr 
Pfarrer,’ said he, 'you know I am a good Catholic, and in 
many most fmportant conversations which I had with the Comte 
de Saverne, the differences between our two churches was the 
subject of our talk, and I do think I should have converted 
him to ours.’ I, humble village pastor as I am, was not afraid 
to speak in such a cause, and we straightway had a most inter- 
esting conversation together, in which, as the gentleman showed, 
I had not the worst of the argument. It appeared he had been 
educated for the Roman Church, but afterwards entered the 
army. He was a most interesting man, and his name was le 
Chevalier de la Motte. You look as if you had known him, M. 
le Capitaine— will it please you to replenish your pip^ and 
take another glass of my beer ? ” 

I said I had effectivement known M. de la Motte ; and the 
good old clergyman (with many compliments to me for speak- 
ing French and German so glibly) proceeded with his artless 
narrative ; " I was ever a poor horseman : and when I came to 
be a chaplain and major-domo at the Hotel de Saverne, in the 
Count’s absence, Madame more than once rode entirely away 
from me, saying that she Could not afford ^to go at my clerical 
jog-trot. And being in a scarlet amazon, and a conspicuous 


THE TRAVELLERS. 


6iS 

object, you see, I thought I saw her at a distance talking to a 
gentleman on a schimmel horse, in a grass-green coat. When I 
asked her to whom she spoke, she said, ‘ M. le Pasteur, you 
radotez with your gray horse and your green coat ! If you are 
set to be a spy over me, ride faster, or bring out the old ladies 
to bark at your side.’ The fact is, the Countess was forever 
quarrelling with those old ladies, and they were a yelping ill- 
natured pair. They treated me, a pastor of the Reformed 
Church of the Augsburg Confession, as no better than a lack- 
ey, sir, and made me eat the bread of humiliation ; whereas 
Madame la Comtesse, though often haughty, flighty, and pas- 
sionate, could also be so winning and gentle, that no one could 
resist her. Ah, sir ! ” said the pastor, ‘‘ that woman had a 
coaxing way with her when she chose, and when her flight came 
I was in such a way that the- jealous old sister-in-laws said I 
was in love with her myself. Pfui ! Fora month before my 
lord’s arrival I had been knocking at all doors to see if I could 
find my poor wandering lady behind them. She, her child, and 
Martha her maid, were gone, and we knew not whither. 

On that very first day of his unhappy arrival, M. le Comte 
discovered what his sisters, jealous and curious as they were, 
what I, a man of no inconsiderable acumen, had failed to note. 
Amongst torn papers and chiffons, in her ladyship’s bureau, 
there was a scrap with one line in her handwriting — ‘ Ursiilc., 
Ur stile., le tyran rev * * ’ and no more. 

^Ah !’ M. le Comte said, ‘she is gone to her foster-sister 
in England ! Quick, quick, horses ! ’ And before two hours 
were passed he was on horseback, making the first stage of that 
long journey.” 


CHAPTER III. 

THE TRAVELLERS. 

The poor gentleman was in such haste that the old proverb 
was realized in his case, and his journey was anything but 
speedy. At Nanci he fell ill of a fever, which had nearly carried 
him off, and in which he unceasingly raved about his child, and 
called upon his faithless wife to return her. Almost before he 
was convalescent, he was on his way again, to Boulogne, where 


6i6 


DEmS DUVAL. 


he saw that English coast on which he rightly conjectured his 
fugitive wife was sheltered. 

And here, from my boyish remembrance, which, respecting 
these early days, remains extraordinarily clear, I can take up 
the story, in which I was myself a very young actor, playing in 
the strange, fantastic, often terrible, drama which ensued a not 
insignificant part. As I survey it now, the curtain is down, and 
the play long over ; as I think of its surprises, disguises, mys- 
teries, escapes, and dangers, I am amazed myself, and some- 
times inclined to be almost as great a fatalist as M. de la Motte, 
who vowed that a superior Power ruled our actions for us, and 
declared that he could no more prevent his destiny from ac- 
complishing itself, than he could prevent his hair from growing. 
What a destiny it was ! What a fatal tragedy was now about 
to begin ! 

One evening in our Midsummer holidays, in the year 1769, 
I remember being seated in my little chair at home, with a 
tempest of rain beating down the street. We had customers on 
most evenings, but there happened to be none on this night ; 
and I remember I was puzzling over a bit of Latin grammar, to 
which mother used to keep me stoutly when I came home from 
school. 

It is fifty years since.* I have forgotten who knows how 
many events of fny life, which are not much worth the remem- 
bering ; but I have as clearly before my eyes now a little scene 
which occurred on this momentous night, as though it had been 
acted within this hour. As we are sitting at our various em- 
ployments, we hear steps coming up the street, which was 
empty, and silent but for the noise of the wind and rain. We 
hear steps — several steps — -along the pavement, and they stop 
at our door. 

“ Madame Duval ! It is Gregson ! cries a voice from with- 
out. 

“ Ah, bon Dieu ! says mother, starting up and turning 
quite white. 

And then I heard the cry of an infant. Dear heart ! How 
well I remember that little cry ! 

As the door opens, a great gust of wind sets pur two candles 
flickering, and I see enter 

A gentleman giving his arm to a lady who is veiled in cloaks 
and wraps, an attendant carrying a crying child, and Gregson 
the boatman after them. 

My mother gives a great hoarse shriek, and crying out, 

♦ The narrative seems to have been written about the year 1820. 


THE TRAVELLERS. 


6iy 

‘‘ Clarisse ! Clarisse ! ” rushes up to the lady, and hugs and em- 
braces her passionately. The child cries and wails. The 
nurse strives to soothe the infant. The gentleman takes off his 
hat and wrings the wet from it, and looks at me. It was then 
I felt a strange shock and terror. I have felt the same shock 
once or twice in my life : and once, notably, the person so af- 
fecting me has been my enemy, and has come to a dismal 
end. 

“ We have had a very rough voyage,’^ says the gentleman 
(in French) to my grandfather. “ We have been fourteen hours 
at sea. Madame has suffered greatly, and is much exhausted.’’ 

“ Thy rooms are ready,” says mother, fondly. “ My poor 
Biche, thou shalt sleep in comfort to-night, and need fear noth- 
ing, nothing ! ” 

A few days before I had seen mother and her servant 
mightily busy in preparing the rooms on the first floor, and dec- 
orating them. When I asked whom she was expecting, she 
boxed my ears, and bade me be quiet ; but these were eyidently 
the expected visitors ; and, of course, from the names which 
mother used, I knew that the lady was the Countess of Saverne. 

‘‘ And this is thy son, Ursule ? ” says the lady. ‘‘He is a 
great boy ! My little wretch is always crying.” 

“Oh, the little darling,” says mother, seizing the child, 
which fell to crying louder than ever, “ scared by the nodding 
plume and bristling crest,” of Madame Duval, who wore a great 
cap in those days, and indeed looked as fierce as any Hector. 

When the pale lady spoke so h^shly about the child, I re- 
member myself feeling a sort of surprise and displeasure. In- 
deed, I have loved children all my life, and am a fool about 
them (as witness my treatment of my own rascal), and no one 
can say that I was ever a tyrant at school, or ever fought there 
except to hold my own. 

My mother produced what food was in the house, and wel- 
comed her guests to her humble table. What trivial things re- 
main impressed on the memory ! I remember laughing in my 
boyish way because the lady said, “Ah ! c’est ga du the ? je 
n’en ai jamais goute. Mais c’est tr s mauvais, n’est-ce pas, M. 
le Chevalier ? ” I suppose they had not learned to drink tea 
in Alsace yet. Mother stopped my laughing with her usual ap- 
peal to my ears. I was daily receiving that sort of correction 
from the good soul. Grandfather said. If Madame the Coun- 
tess would like a little tass of real Nantes brandy after her voy- 
age, he could supply i t)ut she would have none of that 
either, and retired soon to her chamber, which had been pre- 


6i8 


DENIS DUVAL. 


pared for her with my mother’s best sheets and diapers, and in 
which was a bed for her maid Martha, who had retired to it 
with the little crying child. For M. le Chevalier de la Motte 
an apartment was taken at Mr. Billis’s the baker’s, down the 
street : — a friend who gave me many a plum-cake in my child- 
hood, and whose wigs grandfather dressed, if you must know 
the truth. 

At morning and evening we used to have prayers, which 
grandfather spoke with much eloquence ; but on this night, as 
he took out his great Bible, and was having me read a chapter, 
my mother said, “ No. This poof Clarisse is fatigued, and will 
go to bed.” And to bed accordingly the stranger went. And 
as I read my little chapter, I remember how tears fell down 
mother’s cheeks, and how she cried, “Ah, mon Dieu, mon 
Dieu ! ayez pitie d’elle,” and when I was going to sing our even- 
ing hymn, “ Nun ruhen alle WMder,” she told me to hush. 
Madame up stairs was tired, and wanted to sleep. And she 
went up stairs to look after Madame, and bade me be a little 
guide to the strange gentleman, and show him the way to Bil- 
lis’s house. Off I went, prattling by his side ; I dare say I 
soon forgot the terror which I felt when I first saw him. You 
may be sure all Winchelsea knew that a French lady, and her 
child, and her maid, were come to stay with Madame Duval, 
and a French gentleman to lodge over the baker’s. 

I never shall forget my terror and astonishment when mother 
told me that this lady who came to us w'as a Papist. There 
were two gentlemen of that religion living in our town, at a 
handsome house called the Priory ; but they had little to do 
with persons in my parents’ humble walk of life, though of 
course my mother would dress Mrs. Weston’s head as well as 
any other lady’s. I forgot also to say that Mrs. Duval went 
out sometimes as ladies’ nurse, and in that capacity had at- 
tended Mrs. Weston, who, however, lost her child. The Wes- 
tons had a chapel in their house, in the old grounds of the 
Priory, and clergymen of their persuasion used to come over 
from my Lord Newburgh’s of Slindon, or from Arundel, where 
there is another great Papist house ; and one or two Roman 
Catholics — there were very few of them in our town — were 
buried in a part of the old gardens of the Priory, where a 
monks’ burying-place had been before Harry VIII.’s time. 

The new gentleman was the first Papist to whom^I had ever 
spoken ; and as I trotted about the town with him, showing him 
the old gates, the church, and so forth, I remember saying to 
him, “ And have you burned any Protestants ? ” 


THE TRAVELLERS, 


619 

“ Oh, yes ! says he, giving a horrible grin, “ I have roasted 
several, and eaten them afterwards.’’ And I shrank back from 
him, and his pale grinning face ; feeling once more that terror 
which had come over me when I first beheld him. He was a 
queer gentleman ; he was amused by my simplicity and odd 
sayings. He was never tired of having me with him. F e said 
I should be his little English master ; and indeed he learned 
the language surprisingly quick, whereas poor Madame de Sa- 
verne never understood a word of it. 

She was very ill — pale, with a red spot on either cheek, sit- 
ting for whole hours in silence, and looking round frightened, 
as if a prey to some terror. I have seen my mother watching 
her, and looking almost as scared as the countess herself. At 
times, Madame could not bear the crying of the child, and 
would order it away from her. At other times, she would 
clutch it, cover it with cloaks, and lock her door, and herself 
into the chamber with her infant, ^he used to walk about the 
house of a night. I had a little room near mother’s, which I 
occupied during the holidays, and on Saturdays and Sundays, 
when I came over from Rye. I remember quite well waking 
up one night, and hearing Madame’s voice at mother’s door, 
crying out, “Ursula, Ursula! quick I horses! I must go away. 
He is coming ; I know he is coming ! ” And then there were 
remonstrances on mother’s part, and Madame’s maid came out 
of her room, with entreaties to her mistress to return. At the 
cry of the child, the poor mother would rush away from what- 
ever place she was in, and hurry to the infant. Not that she 
loved it. At the next moment she would cast the child down 
on the bed, and go to the window again, and look to the sea. 
For hours she sat at that window, with a curtain twisted round 
her, as if hiding from some one. Ah ! how have I looked up 
at that window since, and the light twinkling here ! I wonder 
does the house remain yet } I don’t like now to think of the 
passionate grief I have passed through, as I looked up to yon 
glimmering lattice. 

It was evident our poor visitor was in a deplorable condi- 
tion. The apothecary used to come* and shake his head, and 
order medicine. The medicine did little good. The sleep- 
lessness continued. She was a prey to constant fever. She 
would make incoherent answers to questions put to her, laugh 
and weep at odd times and places ; push her meals away from 
her, though they were the best my poor mother could supply ; 
order my grandfather to go and sit in the kitchen, and not 
have the impudence to sit down before her ; coax and scold 


620 


DENIS DUVAL. 


my mother by turns, and take her up very sharply when she 
rebuked me. Poor Madame Duval was scared by her foster- 
sister. She, who ruled everybody, became humble before the 
poor crazy lady. I can see them both now, the lady in white, 
listless and silent as she would sit for hours taking notice of 
no one, and mother watching her with terrified dark eyes. 

The Chevalier de la Motte had his lodgings, and came and 
went between his house and ours. I thought he was the lady’s 
cousin. He used to call himself her cousin ; I did not know 
what our pastor M. Borel meant when he came to mother one 
day, and said, ‘‘ Fi, done, what a pretty business thou hast 
commenced, Madame Denis — thou an elder’s daughter of our 
Church ! ” 

What business ? ” says mother. 

“ That of harboring crime and sheltering iniquity,” says he, 
naming the crime, viz. No. vii. of the Decalogue. 

Being a child, I did not then understand the word he used. 
But as soon as he had spoken, mother, taking up a saucepan 
of soup, cries out, “ Get out of there. Monsieur, all pastor as 
you are, or I will send this soup at thy ugly head, and the 
saucepan afterwards.” And she looked so fierce, that I am 
not surprised the little man trotted off. 

Shortly afterwards grandfather comes home, looking almost 
as frightened as his commayiding officer^ M. Borel. Grandfather 
expostulated with his daughter-in-law. He was in a great 
agitation. He wondered how she could speak so to the pastor 
of the Church. “ All the town,” says he, “ is talking about 
you and this unhappy lady.” 

“ All the town is an old woman,” replies Madame Duval, 
stamping her foot and twisting her mustache^ I might say, 
almost. “ What ? These white-beaks of Fpnch cry out be- 
cause I receive my foster-sister ? What ? It is wTong to shelter 
a poor foolish dying woman ? Oh, the cowards, the cowards ! 
Listen, petit papa : if you hear a word said at the club against 
your hrUy and do not knock the man down, I will.” And, faith, 
I think grandfather’s would have kept her word. 

I fear my own unluoky simplicity brought part of the op- 
probrium down upon my poor mother, which she had now to 
suffer in our French colony; for one day a neighbor, Madame 
Crochu by name, stepping in and asking, ‘‘ How is your board- 
er, and how is her cousin the Count ? ” 

‘‘ Madame Clarisse is no better than before,” said I, shaking 
my head wisely, ‘‘ and the gentleman is not a count, and he is 
not her cousin, Madame Crochu ! 


TffE TRAVELLERS, 


621 


** Oh, he is no relation ? ’’ says the mantuamaker. And that 
story was quickly told over the little town, and when we went 
to church next Sunday, M. Borel preached a sermon which 
made all the congregation look to us, and poor mother sat 
boiling red like a lobster fresh out of the pot. I did not quite 
know what I had done : I know what mother was giving me 
for my pains, when our poor patient, entering the room, hearing, 
I suppose, the hissing of the stick (and never word from me, I 
used to bite a bullet, and hold my tongue), rushed into the 
room, whisked the cane out of mother’s hand, flung her to the 
other end of the room with a strength quite surprising, and 
clasped me in her arms and began pacing up and down the 
room, and glaring at mother. “ Strike your own child, monster, 
monster ! ” says the poor lady. Kneel down and ask pardon : 
or, as sure as I am the queen, I will order your head off ! ” 

At dinner, she ordered me to come and sit by her. 
‘‘ Bishop ! ” she said to grandfather, ‘‘ my lady of honor has 
been naughty. She whipped the little prince with a scorpion. 
I took it from her hand. Duke ! if she does it again, there is 
a sword : I desire you to cut the countess’s head off ! ” And 
then she took a carving-knife and waved it, and gave one of 
her laughs, which always set poor mother a crying. She used 
to call us dukes and princes — I don’t know what — poor soul. 
It was the Chevalier de la Motte, whom she generally styled 
duke, holding out her hand, and saying, ‘‘ Kneel, sir, kneel, and 
kiss our royal hand.” And M. de la Motte would kneel with 
a sad sad, face, and go through this hapless ceremony. As for 
grandfather, who was very bald, and without his wig, being one 
evening below her window culling a salad in his garden, she 
beckoned him to her smiling, and when the poor old man 
came, she upset a dish of tea over his bald pate and said, I 
appoint you and anoint you Bishop of St. Denis ! ” 

The woman Martha, who had been the companion of the 
Countess de Saverne in her unfortunate flight from home — I 
believe that since the birth of her child the poor lady had never 
been in her right senses at all — broke down under the cease- 
less watching and care her mistress’s condition necessitated, 
and I have no doubt found her duties yet more painful and 
difficult when a second mistress, and a very harsh, imperious, 
and jealous one, was set over her in the person of worthy 
Madame Duval. My mother was for ordering everybody who 
would submit to her orders, and entirely managing the affairs 
of all those whom she loved. She put the mother to bed, and 
the baby in her cradle ; she prepared food for both of them, 


622 


DENIS DUVAL. 


dressed one and the other with an equal affection, and loved 
that unconscious mother and child with a passionate devotion. 
But she loved her own way, was jealous of all who came be- 
tween her and the objects of her love, and no doubt led her 
subordinates an uncomfortable life. 

Three months of Madame Duval tired out the Countess’s 
Alsatian maid, Martha. She revolted and said she would go 
home. Mother said she was an ungrateful wretch, but was de- 
lighted to get rid of her. She always averred the woman stole 
articles of dress, and trinkets, and laces, belonging to her mis' 
tress, before she left us : and in an evil hour this wretched 
Martha went away. I believe she really loved her mistress, 
and would have loved the child, had my mother’s rigid arms 
not pushed her from its cot. Poor little innocent, in what tragic 
gloom did thy life begin ! But an unseen Power was guarding 
that helpless innocence : and sure a good angel watched it in 
its hour of danger ! 

So Madame Duval turned Martha out of her tent as Sarah 
thrust out Hagar. Are women pleased after doing these pretty 
tricks ? Your ladyships know best. Madam D. not only thrust 
out Martha, but flung stones after Martha all her life. She 
went away, not blameless perhaps, but wounded to the quick 
with ingratitude which had been shown to her, and a link in 
that mysterious chain of destiny which was binding all these 
people — me the boy of seven years old ; yonder little si3eech- 
less infant of as many months ; that poor wandering lady bereft 
of reason ; that dark inscrutable companion of hers who brought 
eyil with him wherever he came. 

From Dungeness to Boulogne is but six-and-thirty miles, 
and our boats, when war was over, were constantly making 
journeys there. Even in war-time the little harmless craft left 
each other alone, and, I suspect, carried on a great deal of 
peaceable and fraudulent trade together. Grandfather had 
share of a “ fishing ” boat with one Thomas Gregson of Lydd. 
When Martha was determined to go, one of our boats was ready 
to take her to the place from whence she came, or transfer her 
to a French boat, which would return into its own harbor.* 
She was carried back to Boulogne and landed. I know the 
day full well from a document now before me, of which the 
dismal writing and signing were occasioned by that very 
landing. 

As she stepped out from the pier (a crowd of people, no 

* There were points for which our boats used to make, and meet the French boats when 
not disturbed, and do a great deal more business than I could then understand.— D. D. 


THE TRAVELLERS. 


623 

doubt, tearing the poor wretch’s slender luggage from her to 
carry it to the Customs) almost the first person on whom the 
woman’s eyes fell was her master the Count de Saverne. He 
had actually only reached the place on that very day, and walked 
the pier, looking towards England, as many a man has done 
from the same spot, when he saw the servant of his own wife 
come up the side of the pier. 

He rushed to her, as she started back screaming and almost 
fainting, but the crowd of beggars behind her prevented her 
retreat. “ The child, — does the child live ? ” asked the poor 
Count, in the German tongue, which both spoke. 

The child was well. Thank God, thank God ! The poor 
father’s heart was freed from that terror, then ! I can fancy 
the gentleman saying, ‘‘ Your mistress is at Winbhelsea, with 
her foster-sister ? ” 

“ Yes, M. le Comte.” 

“ The Chevalier de la Motte is always at Winchelsea ? 

“Ye — oh, no, no, M. le Comte ! ” 

“ Silence, liar ! He made the journey with her. They 
stopped at the same inns. ' M. le Brun, merchant, aged 34 ; his 
sister, Madame Dubois, aged 24, with a female infant in her 
arms, and a maid, left this port, on 20th April, in the English 
fishing-boat ‘ Mary,’ of Rye. Before embarking they slept at 
the ‘ Ecu de France.’ I knew I should find them.” 

“ By all that is sacred, I never left Madarne once during the 
voyage ! ” 

“ Never till to-day ? Enough. How was the fishing-boat 
called which brought you to Boulogue ? ” 

One of the boat’s crew was actually walking behind the 
unhappy gentleman at the time, with some packet which 
Martha had left in it."^ It seemed as if fate was determined 
upon suddenly and swiftly bringing the criminal to justice, and 
under the avenging sword of the friend he had betrayed. He 
bade the man follow him to the hotel. There should be a 
good drink-money for him. 

“ Does he treat her well ? ” asked the poor gentleman, as 
he and the maid walked on. 

“ Dame ! No mother can be more gentle than he is with 
her !” Where Martha erred was in not saying that her mistress 
was utterly deprived of reason, and had been so almost since 
the child’s birth. She owned that she had attended her lady 
to the cathedral when the Countess and the infant were chris- 

* I had this from the woman herself, whom we saw when we paid our visit to Lorraine 
and Alsace in 1814. 


624 


DEms DUVAL. 


tened, and that M. de la Motte was also present. “ He has 
taken body and soul too/' no doubt the miserable gentleman 
thought. 

He happened to alight at the very hotel where the fugi- 
tives of whom he was in search had had their quarters four 
months before (so that for two months at least poor M. de 
Saverne must have lain ill at Nanci at the commencement of 
his journey). The boatman, the luggage people, and Martha 
the servant followed the Count to this hotel ; and the femme- 
de-chambre remembered how Madame Dubois and her brother 
had been at the hotel — a poor sick lady, who sat up talking 
the whole night. Her brother slept in the right wing across 
the court. Monsieur has the lady’s room. How that child 
did cry ! See, the windows look on the port. ‘‘Yes, this was 
the lady’s room.” • 

“ And the child lay on which side ? ” 

“ On that side.” 

M. de Saverne looked at the place which the woman 
pointed out, stooped his head towards the pillow, and cried as 
if his heart would break. The fisherman’s tears rolled down 
too over his brown face and hands. Le pauvre homme^ le pauvre 
homme I 

“ Come into my sitting-room with me,” he said to the fish- 
erman. The man followed him and shut the door. 

His burst of feeling was now over. He became entirely 
calm. 

“ You know the house from which the woman came, at 
Winchelsea, in England ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“You took a gentleman and a lady thither? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ You remember the man ? ” 

“ Perfectly.” 

“ For thirty louis will you go to sea to-night, take a passen- 
ger, and deliver a letter to M. de la Motte ? ” 

The man agreed : and I take out from my secretary that 
letter, in its tawny ink of fifty years’ date, and read it with a 
strange interest always : — 

TV Ml? Chevalier Francois Joseph de la Motte, at Winchelsea^ in England. 

“ I KNEW I should find you. I never doubted where you were. But for a sharp illness 
which I made at Nanci, I should have been with you two months earlier. After what has 
occurred between us, I know this invitation will be to you as a command, and that you will 
hasten as you did at my rescue from the English bayonets as Hastenbeck. Between us, M. 
le Chevalier, it is to life or death. I depend upon you to communicate this to no one, and 
to follow the messenger, who will bring you to me. 


Count de Saverne.' 


THE TRAVELLERS. 


625 

This letter was brought to our house one evening as we sat 
in the front shop. I had the child on my knee, which would 
have no other playfellow but me. The Countess was pretty 
quiet that evening — the night calm, and the windows open. 
Grandfather was reading his book. The Countess and M. de 
la Motte were at cards, though, poor thing, she could scarce 
play for ten minutes at a time ; and there comes a knock, at 
which grandfather puts down his book.* 

“ All’s well,” says he. “ Entrez. Comment ! c’est vous 
Bidois ” 

‘‘*’Oui, c’est bien moi, patron ! ” says Mons. Bidois, a great 
fellow in boots and petticoat, with an eelskin queue hanging 
down to his heels. “ C’est Ik le petit du pauv’ Jean Louis 
Est i genti le pti patron ! ” 

And as he looks at me, he. rubs a hand across his nose. 

At this moment Madame la Comtesse 'gave one, two, three 
screams, a laugh, and cries — Ah^’est mon mari qui revient 
de la guerre. II est Ik — k la croisee. Bon jour, M. le Comte ! 
Bon jour. Vous avez une petite fille bftn laide, bien laide, que 
je n’aime pas du tout, pas du tout, pas du tout ! He is there ! 
I saw him at the window. Ther^ ! there ! hide me from him. 
He will kilkme, he will kill me ! ” she cried. 

“ Calmez-vous, Clarisse,” says the Chevalier, who was 
weary, no doubt, of the poor lady’s endless outcries and follies. 

Calmez-vous, ma fille ! ” sings out mother, from the inner 
room, where she was washing. 

‘‘ Ah, Monsieur is the Chevalier de la Motte ? ” says 
Bidois. 

‘‘ Apres Monsieur,” says the Chevalier, looking haughtily 
up from the cards. 

“ In that case, I have a letter for M. le Chevalier.” And 
the sailor handed to the Chevalier de la Motte that letter which 
I have translated, the ink of which was black and wet then, 
though now it is sere and faded. 

This Chevalier had faced death and danger in a score of 
dare-devil expeditions. At the game of steel and lead there was 
no cooler performer. He put the letter which he had received 
quietly into his pocket, finished his game with the Countess, 
and telling Bidois to follow him to his lodgings, took leave of 
the company. I dare say the poor Countess built up a house 
with the cards, and took little more notice. Mother, going to 
close the shutters, said, ‘‘ It was droll, that little man, -the 

^ There was a particular knock, as I learned later, in use among grandpapa’s private 
friends, and Mons. Bidois no doubt had this signal. 

40 


626 


DENIS DUVAL. 


friend to Bidois, was still standing in the street/’ You see we 
had all sorts of droll friends. Seafaring men, speaking a jargon 
of English, French, Dutch, were constantly dropping in upon 
us. Dear heaven, when I think in what a company I have lived, 
and what a galere I rowed in, is it not a wonder that I did not 
finish where some of my friends did ? 

I made a drble de metier at this time. I was set by grandfather 
to learn his business. Our apprentice taught me the com- 
mencement of the noble art of wig- weaving. As soon as I was 
tall enough to stand to a gentleman’s nose I was promised to 
be promoted to be a shaver. I trotted on mother’s errands with 
her bandboxes, and what not ; and I was made dry-nurse to 
poor Madame’s baby, who, as I said, loved me most of all in 
the house ; and who'would put her little dimpled hands out and 
crow with delight to see me. The first day I went out with 
this little baby in a little wheel-chair mother got for her the 
town boys made rare fun of me : and I had to fight one, as 
poor little Agnes sat sucking her little thumb in her chair, I 
suppose ; and whilst th? battle was going on, who should come 
up but Doctor Barnard, the English rector of Saint Philip’s, 
who lent us French Protestants the nave of his church for our 
service, whilst our tumble-down old church was being mended. 
Doctor Barnard (for a reason which I did not know at that 
time, but which I am compelled to own now was a good one) 
did not like grandfather, nor mother, nor our family. You may 
be sure our people abused him in return. He was called a 
haughty priest — a villain beeg-veeg, mother used to say, in her 
French-English. And perhaps one of the causes of her dislike 
to him was, that his big vig — a fine cauliflower it was, was pow- 
dered at another barber’s. Well, whilst the battle royal was 
going on between me and Tom Caffin (dear heart! how well I 
remember the fellow, though — let me see — it is fifty-four years 
since we punched each other’s little noses), Doctor Barnard walks 
up to us boys and stops the fighting. “ You little rogues ! I’ll 
have you all put in the stocks and whipped by my beadle,” says 
the Doctor, who was a magistrate too : ‘‘ as for this little French 
barber, he is always in mischief.” 

They laughed at me and called me Dry-nurse, and wanted " 
to upset the little cart, sir, and I wouldn’t bear it. And it’s my 
duty to protect a poor child that can’t help itself,” said I, very 
stoutly. ‘‘ F(er mother is ill. Her nurse has run away, and she 
has nobody — nobody to protect her but me — and ‘ Notre Pere 
qui est aux cieux ; ” and 1 held up my little hand as grandfather ' 
used to do ; and if those boys hurt the child I will fight for 
her.” 


THE TRAVELLERS. 627 

The Doctor rubbed his hand across his eyes ; and felt in 
his pocket and gave me a dollar. 

“ And come to see us all at the Rectory, child,’’ Mrs. 
Barnard says, who was with the Doctor ; and she looked at the 
little baby that was in its cot, and said, ‘‘ Poor thing, poor 
thing ! ” 

And the Doctor, turning round to the English boys, still 
holding me by the hand, said, “ Mind, all you boys ! If I hear 
of you being such cowards again as to strike this little lad for 
doing his duty, I will have you whipped by my beadle, as sure 
as my name is Thomas Barnard. Shake hands, you Thomas 
Caffin, with the French boy ; ” and I said, “ I would shake 
hands or fight it out whenever Tom Caffin liked ; ” and so took 
my place as pony again, and pulled my little cart down Sand- 
gate. 

These stories got about amongst the townspeople, and fish- 
ermen, and seafaring folk, I suppose, and the people of our 
little circle ; and they were the means, God help me, of bring- 
ing me in those very early days a (egacy which I have still. 
You see, the day after Bidois, the French fisherman, paid us a 
visit, as I was pulling my little cart up the hill to a little farmer’s 
house where grandfather and a partner of his had some pigeons, 
of which I was very fond as a boy, I met a little dark man 
whose face I cannot at all recall to my mind, but who spoke 
French and German to me like grandfather and mother. ‘‘That 
is the child of Madame von Zabern ? ” says he, trembling very 
much. 

“ Ja, Herr! ” says the little boy. * * * * 

O Agnes, Agnes 1 How the years roll away 1 What strange 
events have befallen us : what passionate griefs have we had 
to suffer : what a merciful heaven has protected us, since that 
day when your father knelt over the little car, in which his 
child lay sleeping I have the picture in my mind now. I see a 
winding road leading down to one of the gates of our town ; 
the blue marsh-land, and yonder, across the marsh. Rye towers 
and gables ; a great silver sea stretching beyond ; and that 
dark man’s figure stooping and looking at the child asleep. 
He never kissed the infant or touched her. I remember it 
woke smiling, and held out its little arms, and he turned away 
with a sort of groan. 

Bidois, the French fisherman I spoke of as having been to 
see us on the night before, came up here with another compan- 
ion, an Englishman I think. 

“ Ah I we seek for you everywhere. Monsieur le Comte,’* 
says he. “ The tide serves and it is full time.” 


628 


DENIS DUVAL. 


“ Monsieur de Chevalier is on board ? says the Count 
Saverne. 

“ II est bien Ik,” says the fisherman. And they went down 
the hill through the gate, without turning to look back. 

Mother was quite quiet and gentle all that day. It seemed 
as if something scared her. The poor Countess prattled and 
laughed, or cried in her unconscious way. But grandfather at 
evening prayer that night making the exposition rather long, 
mother stamped her foot, and said, “ Assez bavard^ comme 9 a, 
mon pere,” and sank back in her chair with her apron over her 
face. 

She remained all the next day very silent, crying often, and 
reading in our great German Bible. She was kind to me 
that day. I remember her saying^ in her deep voice, “ Thou 
art a brave boy, Denikin.” It^as seldom she patted my head 
so softly. That night our patient was very wild ; and laughing a 
great deal, and singing so that people would stop in the streets 
to listen. 

Doctor Barnard again met me that day, dragging my little car- 
riage, and he fetched me into the Rectory for the first time and 
gave me cake and wine, and the book of the “ Arabian Nights,” 
and the ladies admired the little baby, and said it was a pity it 
was a little Papist, and the Doctor hoped 7 was not going turn 
Papist, and I said, ‘‘ Oh, never.” Neither mother nor I liked 
that darkling Roman Catholic clergyman who was fetched over 
from our neighbors at the Priory by M. de la Motte. The 
Chevalier was very firm himself in that religion. I little 
thought then that I was to see him on a day when his courage 
and his faith were both to have an awful trial. 

* * I was reading then in this fine book of Monsieur 

Galland which the Doctor had given me. I had no orders to 
go to bed, strange to say, and I dare say was peeping into the 
cave of the Forty Thieves along with Master Ali Baba, when I 
heard the clock whirring previously to striking twelve, and steps 
coming rapidly up our empty street. 

Mother started up, looking quite haggard, and undid the bolt 
of the door. 

“ C’est lui ! ” says she, with her eyes starting, and the Chev- 
alier de la Motte came in, looking as white as a corpse. 

Poor Madame de Saverne up stairs, awakened by the striking 
clock perhaps, began to sing overhead, and the Chevalier gave 
a great start, looking more ghastly than before, as my mother 
with an awful face looked at him. 

‘‘ II I’a voulu,” says M. de la Motte, hanging down his 
head ; and again poor Madame’s crazy voice began to sing. 


THE TRAVELLERS. 


629 


“ On the 27th June of this year, 1769, the Comte de Saverne 
arrived at !Boulogne*sur-]V[er, and lodged at the Ecu de France, 
where also was staying M. le Marquis du Quesne Menneville, 
Chef d’Escadre of the Naval Armies of his Majesty. The 
Comte de Saverne was previously unknown to the Marquis du 
Quesne, but recalling to M. du Quesne’s remembrance the fact 
that his illustrious ancestor the Admiral Duquesne professed 
the Reformed religion, as did M. de Saverne himself, M. de 
Saverne entreated the Marquis du Quesne to be his friend in a 
rencontre which deplorable circumstances rendered unavoidable, 

“ At the same time, M. de Saverne stated to M. le Marquis 
du Quesne the cause of his quarrel with the Chevalier Francis 
Joseph de la Motte, late officer of the regiment of Soubise, at 
present residing in England in the town of Winchelsea, in the 
county of Sussex. The statement made by the Comte de 
Saverne was such as to convince M. du Quesne of the Count s 
right to exact a reparation from the Chevalier de la Motte. 

“ A boat was despached on the night of the 29th June, with 
a messenger bearing the note of M. le Comte de Saverne. And 
in this boat M. de la Motte returned from England. 

“ The undersigned Comte de Berigny,- in garrison at Bou- 
logne, and an acquaintance of M. de la Motte, consented to 
serve as his witness in the meeting with M. de Saverne. 

“ The meeting took place at seven o’clock in the morning, 
on the sands at half a league from the port of Boulogne : and 
the weapons chosen were pistols. Both gentlemen were per- 
fectly calm and collected, as one mi^ht expect from officers 
distinguished in the King’s service, who had faced the enemies 
of France as comrades together. 

“ Before firing, M. le Chevalier de la Motte advanced four 
steps, and holding his pistol down, and laying his hand on his 
heart, he said, — ‘ I swear on the faith of a Christian, and the 
honor of a gentleman, that I am innocent of the charge laid 
against me by Monsieur de Saverne.’ 

“ The Comte de Saverne said, — ‘ M. le Chevalier de la 
Motte, I have made no charge ; and if I had, a lie costs you 
nothing.’ 

“ M. de la Motte, saluting the witnesses courteously, and 
with grief rather than anger visible upon his countenance, 
returned to his line on the sand which was marked out as the 
place where he was -to stand, at a distance of ten paces from 
his adversary. 


DENIS DUVAL. 


630 

“ At the signal being given both fired simultaneously. The 
ball of M. de Saverne grazed M. de la Motte^s side-curl, while 
his ball struck M. de Saverne in the right breast. M. de Saverne 
stood'^a moment, and fell. 

“ The seconds, the surgeon, and M. de la Motte advanced 
toward the fallen gentleman ; and M. de la Motte, holding up 
his hand, again said, — ‘ I take heaven to witness the person is 
innocent.’ ✓ 

“ The Comte de Saverne seemed to be about to speak. He 
lifted himself from the sand, supporting himself on one arm : 

but all he said was, — ‘ You, you ’ and a great issue of blood 

rushed from his throat, and he fell back, and, with a few con- 
vulsions, died. 

(Signed) “ Marquis du Quesne Menneville, 

“ Chef d'‘ Es cadre aux Armees Navales du Roy, 
“ Comte de Berigny, 

‘‘ Brigadier de Cavalerie,^' 

Surgeon's |leporf. 

‘‘ I, Jean Baptiste Drouot, Surgeon-Major of the B.egi- 
ment Royal Cravate, in garrison at Boulogne-sur-Mer, certify 
that I was present at the meeting which ended so lamentably. 
The death of the gentleman who succumbed was immediate \ 
the ball, passing to the right of the middle of the breast-bone, 
penetrated the lung and the large artery supplying it with blood, 
and caused death by immediate suffocation.” 


CHAPTER IV. 

OUT OF THE DEPTHS. 

That last night which he was to pass upon earth, M. de 
Saverne spent in a little tavern in Winchelsea, frequented by 
fishing people, and known to Bidois, who, even during the war, 
was in the constant habit of corning to England upon errands 
in which Mons. Grandpapa was very much interested — precen- 
tor, elder, perruquier as he was. 

The Count de Saverne had had some talk with the fisher- 


LAST MOMENTS OF THE COUNT DE SAVERNE. 





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OUT OF THE DEPTHS. 


631 

man during the voyage from Boulogne, and more conversation 
took place on this last night, when the Count took Bidois partly 
into his confidence ; and, without mentioning the precise cause 
of his quarrel with M. de la Motte, said that it was inevitable ; 
that the man was a villain who ought not to be allowed to 
pollute the earth ; and that no criminal was ever more righte- 
ously executed than this chevalier would be on the morrow, 
when it was agreed that the two were to meetr 

The meeting would have taken place on that very night, but 
M. de la Motte demanded, as indeed he had a right to do, some 
hours for the settlement of his own affairs ; and preferred to 
fight on French ground rather than English, as the survivor of 
the quarrel would be likely to meet with very rough treatment 
in this country. 

La Motte betook himself then to arranging his papers. As 
for the Count de Saverne, he said all his dispositions were 
made. A dowry, — that which his wife brought — would go to 
her child. His own property w^s devised to his own relations, 
and he could give the child nothing. He had only a few pieces 
in his purse, and, “ Tenez,’’ says he, ‘‘ this watch. Should 
anything befall me, I desire it may be given to the little boy 
who saved my — that is, her child. And the voice of M. le 
Comte broke as he said these words, and the tears ran over his 
fingers. And the seaman wept too, as he told the story to me 
years after, nor were some of mine wanting, I think, for that 
poor heart-broken, wretched man, writhing in helpless agony, 
as the hungry sand drank his blood. Assuredly, the guilt of 
that blood was on thy head, Francis de la Motte. 

The watt^h is ticking on the table before me as I write. It 
has been my companion for half a century. I remember my 
childish delight when Bidois brought it to me, and told my 
mother the tale of the meeting of the two gentlemen. 

“ You see her condition,’’ M. de la Motte said to my mother 
at this time. “We are separated forever, as hopelessly as 
though one or other were dead. My hand slew her husband. 
Perhaps my fault destroyed her reason. I transmit misfortunes 
to those I love and would serve. Shall I marry her ? I will if 

{ ou think I can serve her. As long as a guinea remains to me, 
will halve it with her. I have but very few left now. My 
fortune has crumbled under my hands, as have my friendships, 
my once bright prospects, my ambitions. I am a doomed man ; 
somehow, I drag down those who love me into my doom.” 

And so indeed there was a Cam mark^ as it were,' on this 
unhappy man. He did bring wreck and ruin on those who loved 


DENTS DUVAL. 


632 

him. He was as a lost soul, I somehow think, whose tortures 
had begun already. Predestined to evil, to crime, to gloom ; 
but now and again some one took pity upon this poor wretch, 
and amongst those who pitied him was my stern mother. 

And here I may relate how it happened that I “ saved ” the 
child, for which act poor M. de Saverne rewarded me. Bidois 
no doubt told that story to M. le Comte in the course of their 
gloomy voyage. Mrs. Martha, the Countess’s attendant, had 
received or taken leave of absence one night, after putting the 
child and the poor lady, who was n'o better than a child, to bed. 
I went to my bed, and to sleep as boys sleep ; and I forget 
what business called away my mother likewise, but when she 
came back to look for her poor Biche and the infant in its 
cradle — both were gone. 

I have seen the incomparable Siddons, in the play, as, white 
and terrified, she passed through the darkened hall after King 
Duncan’s murder. My mother’s face wore a look of terror to 
the full as tragical, when, starting up from my boyish sleep, I 
sat up in my bed and saw her. She was almost beside herself 
with terror. The poor insane lady and her child were gone — 
who could say where ? Into the marshes — into the sea — into 
the darkness — it was impossible to say whither the Countess 
had fled. _ 

‘‘We must get up, my boy, and find them,” says mother, in a 
hoarse voice ; and I was sent over to Mr. Bliss’s the grocer, in 
East Street, where the Chevalier lived, and where I found him 
sitting (with two priests, by the way, guests, no doubt, of Mr. 
Weston, at the Priory), and all these, and mother, on her side, 
with me following her, went out to look for the fugitives. 

We went by pairs, taking different roads. Mother’s was 
the right one as it appeared, for weOiad not walked many min- 
utes, when we saw a white figure coming towards us, glimmer- 
ing out of the dark, and heard a voice singing. 

“Ah, mon Dieu ! ” says mother, and “ Gott sey dank,” and 
I know not what exclamations of gratitude and relief. It was 
the voice of the Countess. ^ 

As we came up, she knew us with our light, and began to 
imitate, in her crazy way, the cry of the watchman, whom the 
poor sleepless soul had often heard under the windows. “ Past 
twelve o’clock, a starlight night ! ” she sang, and gave one of 
her sad laughs. 

When we came up to her, we found her in a white wrapper, 
her hair flowing down her back and over her poor pale face, 
and again she sang, “ Past twelve o’clock.” 


OUT OF THE DEPTHS. 


633 


The child was not with her. Mother trembled in every 
limb. The lantern shook so in her hand I thought she would 
drop it. 

She put it down on the ground. She took her shawl off 
her back, and covered the poor lady with it, who smiled in her 
childish way, and said, C’est bon • c’est chaud 9a ; ah ! que 
c’est bien ! 

As I chanced to look down at the lady^s feet, I saw one of 
them was naked. Mother, herself in a dreadful agitation, 
embraced and soothed Madame' de Saverne. ‘‘ Tell me, my 
angel, tell me my love, where is the child ? ’’ says mother, al- 
most fainting. 

“ The child, what child That little brat who always cries ? 
I know nothing about children,’’ says the poor thing. “Take 
me to my bed this moment, madam ! How dare you bring me 
into the street with naked feet ! ” 

“ Where have you been walking, my dear ? ” says poor 
mother, trying to soothe her. 

“ I have been to Great Saverne. I wore a domino. I knew 
the coachman quite well, though he was muffled up all but his 
nose. I was presented to Mqnseigneur the Cardinal. I made 
him such a curtsey — like this. Oh, my foot hurts me ! ” 

She often rambled about this ball and play, and hummed 
snatches of tunes and little phrases, of dialogue, which she may 
have heard there. Indeed, I believe it was the only play and 
ball the poor thing ever saw in her life ; her brief life, her 
wretched life. ’Tis pitiful to think how unhappy it was. When 
I recall it, it tears my heart-strings somehow, as it doth to see 
a child in pain. 

As she held up the poor bleeding foot, I saw that the edge 
of her dress was all wet, and covered with sand. 

“ Mother, mother ! ” said I, “ she has been to the sea ! ” 

“ Have you been to the sea, Clarisse ? ” asks mother. 

“ J’ai ete au bal : j’ai danse j j’ai chante. J’ai bien reconnu 
mon cocher. J’ai ete au bal chez le Cardinal. But you must 
not tell M. de Saverne. Oh, no, you mustn’t tell him ! ” 

A sudden thought came to me. And, whenever I remem- 
ber it, my heart is full of thankfulness to the gracious Giver of 
all good thoughts. Madame, of whom I was not afraid, and 
who sometimes was amused by my prattle, would now and then 
take a walk accompanied by Martha her maid, who held the 
infant, and myself, who liked to draw it in its little carriage. 
We used to walk down to the shore, and there was a rock there, 
on which the poor lady would sit for hours. 


634 


DENIS DUVAL, 


“You take her home, mother,’' says I, all in a tremble. 
“ You give me the lantern, and I’ll go — I’ll go ” — I was off be- 
fore I said where. Down I went, through Westgate ; down I 
ran along the road towards the place I guessed at. When I 
had gone a few hundred yards, I saw in the road something 
white. It was the Countess’s slipper^ that she had left there. I 
knew she had gone that way. 

I got down to the shore, running, running with all my little 
might. The moon had risen by this time, shining gloriously 
over a great silver sea. A tide of silver was pouring in over 
the sand. Yonder was that rock where we often had sat. 
The infant was sleeping on it under the stars unconscious. He, 
Who loves little children, had watched over it * * * * I 

scarce can see the words as I write them down. My little baby 
was waking. She had known nothing of the awful sea coming 
nearer with each wave ; but she knew me as I came, and 
smiled, and warbled a little infant welcome. I took her up in 
my arms, and trotted home with my pretty burden. As I 
paced up the hill, M. de la Motte and one of the French clergy- 
men met me. By ones and twos, the other searchers after my 
little wanderer came home from their quest. She was laid in 
her little crib, and never knew, until years later, the danger 
from which she had been rescued. 

My adventures became known in our town, and I made 
some acquaintances who were very kind to me, and were the 
means of advancing me in after-life. I was too young to under- 
stand much what was happening round about me ; but now, if 
the truth must be told, I must confess that old grandfather, 
besides his business of perruquier, which you will say is no very 
magnificent trade, followed others which were far less reputable. 
What do you say, for instance, of a church elder, who lends 
money a la petite semaine^ and at great interest ? The fishermen, 
the market-people, nay, one or two farmers and gentlemen 
round about, were beholden to grandfather for supplies, and 
they came to him, to be shaved va more ways than one. No 
good came out of his gains, as I shall presently tell : but mean- 
while his hands were ever stretched out to claw other folks’ 
money towards himself ; and it must be owned that madame sa 
hru loved a purse too, and was by no means scrupulous as to 
the way of filling it. Monsieur le Chevalier de la Motte was 
free-handed and grand in his manner. He paid a pension, I 
know not how much, for the maintenance of poor Madame de 
Saverne. He had brought her to the strait in which she was, 
poor thing. Had he not worked ou her, she never would have 


OUT OF THE DEPTHS. 


63s 

left her religion : she never would have fled from her husband : 
that fatal duel would never have occurred : right or wrong, he 
was the cause of her calamity, and he would make it as light as 
it might be. I know how, for years, extravagant and embar- 
rassed as he was, he yet supplied means for handsomely main- 
taining the little Agnes when she was presently left an orphan 
in the world, when mother and father both were dead, and her 
relatives at home disowned her. 

The ladies of Barr, Agnes’s aunts, totally denied that the 
infant was their brother’s child, and refused any contribution 
towards her maintenance. Her mother’s family equally dis- 
avowed her. They had been taught the same stoiy% and I sup- 
pose we believe willingly enough what we wish to believe. The 
poor lady was guilty. Her child had been born in her hus- 
band’s absence. When his return was announced, she fled 
from her home, not daring to face him ; and the unhappy 
Count de Saverne died by the pistol of the man who had already 
robbed him of his honor. La Motte had to bear this obloquy, 
or only protest^ against it by letters from England. He could 
not go over to Lorraine, where he was plunged in debt. ‘‘ At 
least, Duval,” said he to me, when I shook hands with him, 
and with all my heart forgave him, “ mad, and reckless as I 
have been, and fatal to all whom I loved ; I have never allowed 
the child to want, and have supported her in comfort, when I 
was myself almost without a meal.” A bad man no doubt this 
was ; and yet not utterly wicked : a great criminal who paid an 
awful penalty. Let us be humble, who have erred too; and 
thankful, if we have a hope that we have found mercy. 

I believe it was some braggart letter, which La Motte wrote 
to a comrade in M. de Vaux’s camp, and in which he boasted 
of making the conversion of a petite protestante at Strasbourg, 
which came to the knowledge of poor M. de Saverne, hastened 
his return home, and brought about this dreadful end. La 
Motte owned as much, indeed, in the last interview I ever had 
with him. 

Who told Madame de Saverne of her husband’s death ? It 
was not for years after that I myself (unlucky chatterbox, whose 
tongue was always blabbing) knew what had happened. My 
mother thought that she must have overheard Bidois the boat- 
man, who told the whole story over his glass of Geneva in our 
parlor. The Countess’s chamber was overhead, and the dOor 
left open. The poor thing used to be very angry at the notion 
of a locked door, and since that awful escapade to the sea- 
shore, my mother slept in her room, or a servant whom she 
liked pretty well supplied mother’s place. 


636 


DENIS DUVAL, 


In her condition the dreadful event affected her but little \ 
and we never knew that she was aware of it until one evening 
when it happened that a neighbor, one of our French people of 
Rye, was talking over the tea-table, and telling us of a dreadful 
thing he had seen on Penenden Heath as he was coming home. 
He there saw a wonia 7 i burned to the stake for the murder of her 
husband. The story is in the Gentlema?! s Magazine for the year 
1769, and that will settle pretty well the date of the evening 
when our neighbor related the horrible tale to us. 

Poor Madame de Saverne (who had a very grand air, and 
was perfectly like a lady) said quite simply, ‘‘ In this case, my 
good Ursule, I shall be burned too. For you know I was the 
cause of my husband being killed. M. le Chevalier went and 
killed him in Corsica.’’ And she looked round with a smile, 
and nodded ; and arranged her white dress with her slim white 
hands. 

When the poor thing spoke, the Chevalier sank back as if 
he had been shot himself. 

“Good-night, neighbor Marion,” groans mother; “she is 
very bad to-night. Come to bed, my dear, come to bed.” And 
the poor thing followed mother, curtseying very finely to the 
company, and saying, quite softly, “ Oui, oui, oui, they will 
burn me ; they will burn me.” 

This idea seized upon her mind, and never left it. Madame 
la Comtesse passed a night of great agitation ; ‘talking inces- 
santly. Mother and her maid were up with her all night. All 
night long we could hear her songs, her screams, her terrible 
laughter. * * Oh pitiful was thy lot in this world, poor 

guiltless, harmless lady. In thy brief years, how little happi- 
ness ! For thy marriage portion only gloom, and terror, and 
submission, and captivity. The awful Will above ns ruled it so. 
Poor frightened spirit ! it has woke under serener skies now, 
and passed out of reach of our terrors, and temptations, and 
troubles. 

At my early age I could only be expected to obey my elders 
and parents, and to consider all things were right which were done 
round about me. Mother’sjcuffs on the head I received with- 
out. malice, and if the truth must be owned, had not seldom to 
submit to the operation which my grandfather used to per- 

form with a certain rod which he kept in a locked cupboard, and 
accompany with long wearisome sermons between each cut or 
two of his favorite instrument. These good people, as 1 grad- 
ually began to learn, bore but an indifferent reputation in the 


OUT OF THE DEPTHS. 


> 637 

town which they inhabited, and were neither iiked by the 
French of their own colony, nor by the English among whom 
we dwelt. Of course, being a simple little fellow, I honored 
my father and mother as became me — my grandfather and 
mother, that is — father being dead some years. 

Grandfather, I knew, had a share in a fishing-boat, as num- 
bers of people had both at Rye and Winchelsea. Stocks, our 
fisherman^ took me out once or twice, and I liked the sport 
very much ; but it appeared that I ought to have said nothing 
about the boat and the fishing — for one night when we pulled 
out only a short way beyond a rock which we used to call the 
Bull Rock, from a pair of horns which §tuck out of the water, 
and there were hailed by my old friend Bidoi^ who had come 
from Boulogne in his lugger — and then * * * well then, I 

was going to explain the whole manner artlessly to one of our 
neighbors who happened to step in to supper, when grandpapa 
(who had made a grace of five minutes long before taking the 
dish-cover off) fetched me a slap across the face which sent me 
reeling off my perch. And the Chevalier, who was supping 
with us, only laughed at my misfortune. 

This being laughed at somehow affected me more than the 
blows. I was used to those, from grandfather and mother too ; 
but when people once had been kind to me I could not bear a 
different behavior from them. And this gentleman certainly 
was. He improved my French very much, and used to laugh 
at my blunders and bad pronunciation. He took a good deal 
of pains with me when I was at home, and made me speak 
French like a little gentleman. 

In a very briet time he learned English himself, with p 
droll accent to be sure, but so as to express himself quite in- 
telligibly. His head-quarters were at Winchelsea, though he 
would frequently be away at Deal, Dover, Canterbury, even 
London. He paid mother a pension for little Agnes, who 
grew apace, and was the most winning child I ever set eyes on. 
I remember, as well as yesterday, the black dress which was 
made for her after her poor mother’s death, her pale cheeks, 
and the great solemn eyes gazing out from under the black 
curling ringlets which fell over her forehead and face. 

Why do I make zigzag journeys 1 ’Tis the privilege of old 
age to be garrulous, and its happiness to remember early days. 
As I sink back in my arm-chair, safe and sheltered post tot dis- 
crimina^ and happier than it has been the lot of most fellow- 
sinners to be, the past comes back to me — the stormy past, the 
strange unhappy yet happy past — and I look at it scared and 


DENIS DUVAL. 


638 

astOHished sometimes ; as huntsmen look at the gaps and 
ditches over which they have leapt, and wonder how they are 
alive. 

My good fortune in rescuing that little darling child caused 
the ChevalieY to be very kind to me ; and when he, was with 
us, I used to hang on to the skirts of his coat, and prattle for 
hours together, quite losing all fear of him. Except my kind 
namesake, the captain and admiral, this was the first ge?itleman 
I ever met in intimacy — a gentleman with many a stain, nay 
crime to reproach him ; but not all lost, I hope and pray. I 
own to having a kindly feeling towards that fatal man. I see 
myself a child prattling at his coat-skirts, and trotting algng 
our roads and marshes with him. I see him with his sad pale 
face — and a kind of blighting look he had — looking at that 
unconscious lady, at that little baby. My friends the Neapol- 
itans would have called his an evil eye, and exorcised it 
accordingly. A favorite walk we had was to a house about a 
mile out of Winchelsea, where a grazing farmer lived. My 
delight then was to see not his cattle, but his pigeons, of which 
he had a good stock, of croppers, pouters, runts, and turbits \ 
and amongst these I was told there were a sort of pigeons 
called carriers, which would fly for prodigious distances, re- 
turning from the place to which they were taken though it 
were ever so distant, to that where they lived and were bred. 

Whilst I was at Mr. Perreau’s, one of these pigeons actually 
came in flying from the sea, as it appeared to me : and Perreau 
looked at it, and fondled it, and said to the Chevalier, There 
is nothing. It is to be at the old place.’’ On which M. le 
Chevalier only said, ‘‘ C’est bien ; ” and as we walked away told 
me all he knew about pigeons, which I dare say was no great 
knowledge. 

Why did he say there was nothing ? I asked in the innocence 
of my prattle. The Chevalier told me that these birds some- 
times brought messages, written on a little paper, and tied 
under their wijigs, and that Perreau said there was nothing 
because there was nothing. 

“ Oh, then ! he sometimes does have messages with his 
birds ? ” 

The Chevalier shrugged his shoulder, and took a great pinch 
out of his fine snuff-box. ‘‘ What did papa Duval do to you 
the other day when you began to talk too fast } ” says he. 

Learn to hold thy little tongue, Denis, mon gargon. If thou 
livest a little longer, and tellest all thou seest, the Lord help 
thee ! ” And I suppose our conversation ended here and he 
strode home, and I trotted after him. 


OUT OF THE DEPTHS. 


639 

I narrate these things occurring in childhood by the help of 
one or two marks which have been left behind — as the inge- 
nious boy found his way home by the pebbles which he dropped 
along his line of march. Thus I happen to know the year when 
poor Madame de Saverne must have been ill, by referring to 
the date of the execution of the woman whom our neighbor 
saw burned on Penenden Heath. Was it days, was it weeks 
after this that Madame de Saverne’s illness ended as all our 
illness will end one day ? 

During the whole course of her illness, whatever its length 
may have been, those priests from Slindon (or from Mr. 
Weston’s the Popish gentleman’s at the Priory) were constantly 
in our house, and I suppose created a great scandal among the 
Protestants of the town. M. de la Motte showed an extraordi- 
nary zeal in this business ; and, sinner as he was, certainly was 
a most devout sinner, according to his persuasion. I do not 
remember, or was not cognizant, when the end came ; but I 
remember my astonishment as, passing by her open chamber 
door, I saw^candles lighted before her bed, and some of those 
clergy watching there, and the Chevalier de la Motte kneeling 
in the passage in an attitude of deep contrition and grief. 

On that last day there was, as it appeared, a great noise and 
disturbance round our house. The people took offence at the 
perpetual coming in and out of the priest ; and on the very 
night when the cofhn was to be taken from our house, and the 
clergymen were performing the last services there, the windows 
of the room, where the poor lady lay, were broken in by a great 
volley of stones, and a roaring mob shouting, “No Popery, 
down with priests ! ” • 

Grandfather lost all courage at these threatening demon- 
strations and screamed out at his dru for bringing all this 
persecution and danger upon him. “ Si/ence, miserable ! ” says 
she. “ Go sit in the back kitchen, and count your money- 
bags ! ” She^ at least, did not lose her courage. ' 

M. de la Motte, thought not frightened, was much disturbed. 
The matter might be very serious. I did not know at the time 
how furiously angry our townspeople were with my parents for 
harboring a Papist. Had they known that the lady was a 
converted Protestant, they would, doubtless, have been more 
violent still. 

We were in a manner besieged in our house ; the garrison 
being — the two priests in much terror ; rpy grandfather, under 
the bed for what I know, or somewhere where he would be 
equally serviceable * my mother and the Chevalier, with their 


640 


DENIS DUVAL. 


wits about them ; and little Denis Duval, no doubt very much 
in the way. When the poor lady died it was thought advisable 
to send her little girl out of the way ; and Mrs. Weston at the 
Priory took her in, who belonged, as has before been said, to 
the ancient faith. 

We looked out with no little alarm for the time when the 
hearse should come to take the poor lady^s body away ; for the 
people would not leave the street, and barricaded either end of 
it, having perpetrated no actual violence beyond the smashing 
of the windo\Vs as yet, but ready no doubt for more mischief. 

Calling me to him, M. de la Motte said, ‘‘ Denis, thou re- 
memberest about the carrier pigeon the other day with nothing 
under his wing ? ” I remembered, of course. 

“ Thou shalt be my carrier pigeon. Thou shalt carry no 
letter but a message. I can trust thee now with a secret.” 
And I kept it, and will tell it now that the people are quite out 
of danger from that piece of intelligence, as I can promise you. 

“ You know Mr. Weston^s house } ” Know the house where 
Agnes was — the best house in the town ? Of course I did. 
He named eight or ten houses besides Weston’s at which I was 
to go and say, “ The mackerel are coming in. Come as many 
of you as can.” And I went to the bouses, and said the words ; 
and when the people said, “ Where ? ” I said, “ Opposite our 
house,” and so went on. 

The last and handsomest house (I had never been in it 
before) was Mr. Weston’s, at the Priory : and there I went 
and called to see him. And I remember Mrs. Weston was 
walking up and down a gallery over the hall with a little crying 
child who would not go to sleep. 

‘‘ Agnes, Agnes ! ” says I, and that baby was quiet in a 
minute, smiling, and crowing and flinging out her arms. Indeed, 
mine was the first name she could speak. 

The gentlemen came out of their parlor, where they were 
over their pipes, and asked me, surlily enough, ‘‘ What I 
wanted ? ” I said, “ The mackerel were out, and the crews 
were wanted before Peter Duval’s, the barber’s.” And one of 
them, with a scowl on his face, and an oath, said they would 
be there, and shut the door in my face. 

As I went away from the Priory, and crossed the church- 
yard by the Rectory gate, who should come up but Doc*tor 
Barnard in his gig, with lamps lighted ; and J always saluted 
him after he had been so kind to me, and had given me the 
books and the cake. ‘‘ What,” says he, “ my little shrimper ! 
Have you fetched any fish off the rocks to-night ? ” 


OUT OF THE DEPTHS. 64X 

“ Oh, no, sir ! ’’ says I. “ I have been taking messages all 
round.” z 

“ And what message, my boy ? ” 

I told him the message about the mackere), &c . ; but added 
that I must not tell the names, for the Chevalier had desired 
me not to mention them. And then 1 went on to tell how 
there was a great crowd in the street, and that they were break- 
ing windows at our house. 

“ Breaking windows ? What for ? ” I told him what had 
happened. ‘‘ Take Dolly to the stables. Don’t say anything 
to your mistress, Samuel, and come along with me, my little 
shrimper,” says the Doctor. He was a very tall man in a great 
white wig. I see him now skipping over the tombstones, by 
the great ivy tower of the church, and so through the church- 
yard gate towards our house. 

The hearse had arrived by this time. The crowd had in- 
creased, there was much disturbance and agitation. As soon 
as the hearse came, a yell rose up from the people. ‘‘ Silence, 
shame ! Hold your tongue ! Let the poor woman go in quiet,” 
a few people said. These were the then of the mackerel fishery; 
whom the Weston gentlemen presently joined. But the fisher- 
men were a small cfowd ; the townspeople were many and very 
angry. As we passed by the end of Port Street (where our 
house was) we could see the people crowding at either end of 
the street, and in the midst the great hearse, with its black 
plumes before our door. 

It was impossible that the hearse could pass through the 
crowd at either end of the street, if the people were determined 
to bar the way. 1 went in, as I had come, by the back gate of 
the garden, where the lane was still quite solitary. Dr. Barnard 
following me. We were awfully scared as we passed through 
the back kitchen (where the oven and boiler is) by the sight of 
an individual who suddenly leapt out of the copper, and who 
cried out, “ O mercy, mercy, save me from the wicked men ! ” 
This was my grandpapa, and, with all respect for grandpapas 
(being of their age and standing myself now), I cannot but own 
that mine on this occasion cut rather a pitiful figure. 

“ Save my house ! Save my property ! ” shouts my ancestor, 
and the Doctor turns away from him scornfully, and passes on. 

In the passage out of this back kitchen we met Monsieur 
de la Motte, who says, ‘‘ Ah, c’est toi, mon gargon. Thou hast 
been on thy errands. Our people are well there ! ” and he 
makes a bow to the Doctor, who came in with me, and who 
replied by a salutation equally stiff. M. de la Motte, recon- 

41 


DENIS DUVAL. 


642 

noitring from the upper room, had, no doubt, seen his people 
arrive. As I looked towards him I remarked that he was 
armed. He had a belt with pistols in it, and a sword by his 
side. 

In the back room were the two Roman Catholic clergymen, 
and four men who had come with the hearse. They had been 
fiercely assailed as they entered the house with curses, shouts, 
bustlings, and I believe even sticks and stones. My mother 
was serving them with brandy when we came in. She was as- 
tonished when she saw the rector make his appearance in our 
house. There was no love between his reverence and our 
family. 

He made a very grand obeisance to the Roman Catholic 
clergymen. ‘‘ Gentlemen,” said he, “ as rector of this parish, 
and magistrate of the county, I have come to keep the peace : 
and if there is any danger, to share it with you. The lady will 
be buried in the old churchyard, I hear. Mr. Trestles, are you 
ready to move ? ” 

The men said they would be prepared immediately, and 
went to bring down their melancholy burden. Open the door, 
you ! ” says the Doctor. The people within shrank back. “ I 
will do it,” says mother. 

“ Et moi, parbleu ! ” says the Chevalier advancing, his hand 
on his hilt. 

I think, sir, I shall be more serviceable than you,” says 
the Doctor, very coldly. “ If these gentlemen my confreres are 
ready, we will go out ; I will go first, as rector of this parish.” 
And mother drew the bolts, and he walked out and took off 
his hat. 

A Babel roar of yells, shouts, curses, came pouring into the 
hall as the door opened, and the Doctor remained on the steps, 
bareheaded and undaunted. 

‘‘ How many of my parishioners are here? Stand aside all 
who come to my church ! ” he called out very bold. 

At this arose immense roars of “No Popery ! down with the 
priests ! down with them ! drown them ! ” and I know not what 
more words of hatred and menace. 

“You men of the French church,” shouted out the Doctor, 
“ are you here ? ” 

“ We are here ! Down with Popery I ” roar the Frenchmen. 

“ Because you were persecuted a hundred years ago, you 
want to persecute in your turn. Is that what your Bible teaches 
you } Mine doesn’t. When your church wanted repair, I gave 
you my nave where you had your service, and were welcome. Is 


OUT OF THE DEPTHS. 


643 

this the way you repay kindness which has been shown to you, 
you who ought to know better ? For shame on you ! I say for 
shame ! Don’t try and frighten 7ne, Roger Hooker, I know 
you, you poaching vagabond ; who kept your wife and children 
when you were at Lewes Jail? How dare^^?// be persecuting 
anybody, Thomas Flint ? As sure as my name is Barnard, if 
you stop this procession, I will commit you to-morrow.” 

Here was a cry of “ Huzzay for the Doctor ! huzzay for the 
Rector ! ” which I am afraid came from the mackerels., who were 
assembled by this time, and were not mum, as fish generally 
are. 

‘‘ Now, gentlemen, advance, if you please!” This he said 
to the two foreign clergymen, who came forward courageously 
enough, the Chevalier de la Motte walking behind them. 
“ Listen, you friends and parishioners. Churchmen and Dis- 
senters ! These two foreign dissenting clergymen are going to 
bury, in a neighboring churchyard, a departed sister, as you 
foreign dissenters have buried your own dead without Farm or 
hindrance ; and I will accompany these gentlemen to the grave 
prepared for the deceased lady, and I will see her laid in peace 
there, as surely as I hope myself to lie in peace.” 

Here the people shouted ; but it was with admiration for 
the rector. There was no outcry any more. The little proces- 
sion fell into an orderly rank, passed through the streets, and 
round the Protestant church to the old burying-ground behind 
the house of the Priory. The rector walked between the two 
Roman Catholic clergymen. I imagine the scene before me 
now — the tramp of the people, the flicker of a torch or two ; 
and then we go in at the gp.te of the Priory ground into the 
old graveyard of the monastery^ where a grave had been dug, 
on which the stone still tells that Clarissa, born de Viomesnil, 
and widow of Francis Stanislas Count, of Saverne and Barr in 
Lorraine, lies buried beneath. 

When the service was ended, the Chevalier de la Motte (by 
whose side I stood, holding by his cloak) came up to the Doctor. 
‘‘Monsieur le Docteur,” says he, “you have acted like a gallant 
man ; you have prevented bloodshed ” 

“I am fortunate, sir,” says the Doctor. 

“ You have saved the lives of these two worthy ecclesiastics, 
and rescued from insult the remains of one ” 

“ Of whom I know the sad history,” says the Doctor, very 
gravely. 

“ 1 am not rich, but will you permit me to give you this 
purse for your poor 1 ” 


644 


DEN/S DUVAL, 


Sir, it is my duty to accept it,” replied the Doctor. The 
purse contained a hundred louis, as he afterwards told me. 

‘‘ And may I ask to take your hand, sir ? ” cries the poor 
Chevalier, clasping his own together. 

‘‘ No, sir ! ” said the Doctor, putting his own hands behind 
his back. “ Your hands have that on them which the gift of 
a few guineas cannot wash away.” The Doctor spoke very 
good French. “ My child, good-night ; and the best thing I 
can wish thee is to wish thee out of the hands of that man.” 

“ Monsieur ! ” says the Chevalier, laying his hand on his 
sword mechanically. 

“ I think, sir, the l^st time it was with the pistol you showed 
your skill ! ” says Doctor Barnard, and went in at his own 
wicket as he spoke, leaving poor La Motte like a man who has 
just been struck with a blow ; and then he fell to weeping and 
crying that the curse — the curse of Cain was upon him. 

“ My-^ood boy,” the old rector said to me in after days, 
while talking over these adventures, “ thy friend the Chevalier 
was the most infernal scoundrel I ever set eyes on, and I never 
looked at his foot without expecting to see it was cloven.” 

And could he tell me anything about the poor Countess ” 
I asked. He knew nothing. He saw her but once, he thought. 

“ And faith,” says he, with an arch look, “ it so happened 
that I was not too intimate with your owft worthy family. 


CHAPTER V. 

I HEAR THE SOUND OF BOW BELLS. 

Whatever may have been the rector’s dislike to my parents, 
in respect of us juniors and my dear little Agnes de Saverne he 
had no such prejudices, and both of us were great favorites 
with him. He considered himself to be a man entirely without 
prejudices ; and towards Roman Catholics he certainly was 
most liberal. He sent his wife to see Mrs. Weston, and an 
acquaintance was made between the families, who had scarcely 
known each other before. Little Agnes was constantly with 
these Westons, with whom the Chevalier de la Motte also 
became intimate. Indeed, we have seen that he must have 
known them already, when he sent me on the famous ‘‘ mac- 


/ THE SOUND OF BOW BELLS. 645 

kerel message which brought together a score at least of 
townspeople. I remember Mrs. Weston as a frightened-looking 
woman, who seemed as if she had a ghost constantly before 
her. Frightened, however, or not, she was always kind to my 
little Agnes. 

The younger of the Weston brothers (he who swore at me 
the night of the burial) was a red-eyed, pimple-faced, cock-fight- 
ing gentleman forever on the trot, and known, I dare say not 
very favorably, all the country round. They were said to be 
gentlemen of good private means. They lived in a pretty gen- 
teel way, with a post-chaise for the lady, and excellent nags to 
ride. They saw very little company ; but this may have been 
because they were Roman Catholics, of whom there were not 
many in the county, except at Arundel and Slindon, where the 
lords and ladies were of too great quality to associate with a 
pair of mere fox-hunting, horse-dealing squires. M. de la 
Motte, who was quite the fine gentleman, as I have said, asso- 
ciated with these people freely enough : but then he had in- 
terests in common with them, which 1 began to understand 
when I was some ten or a dozen years old, and used to go to 
see my little Agnes at the Priory. She was growing apace to 
be a fine lady. She had dancing-masters, music-masters, lan- 
guage-masters (those foreign tonsured gentry who were always 
about the Priory), and was so tall that mother talked of putting 
powder in her hair. Ah, belle dame ! another hand has since 
whitened it, though I love it ebony or silver ! 

I continued at Rye School, boarding with Mr. Rudge and 
his dram-drinking daughter, and got a pretty fair smattering of 
such learning as was to be had at the school. I had a fancy to 
go to sea. but Doctor Barnard was strong against that wish of 
mine ; unless indeed I should go out of Rye and Winchelsea 
altogether — get into a King’s ship, and perhaps on the quarter- 
deck, under the patronage of my friend Sir Peter Denis, who 
ever continued to be kind to me. 

Every Saturday night I trudged home from Rye, as gay as 
schoolboy could be. After Madame de Saverne’s death the 
Chevalier de la Motte took our lodgings on the first floor. He 
was of an active disposition, and found business in plenty to 
occupy him. He would be absent from his lodgings for- weeks 
and months. He made journeys on horseback into the interior 
of the country ; went to London often ; and sometimes abroad 
with our fishermen’s boats. As I have said, he learned our 
language well, and taught me his. Mother’s German was better 


646 


DENIS DUVAL, 


than her French, and my book for reading the German was 
Doctor Luther’s Bible ; indeed, that very volume in which poor 
M. de Saverne wrote down his prayer for the child whom he 
was to see only twice in this world. 

Though Agnes’s little chamber was always ready at our 
house, where she was treated like a little lady, having a servant 
specially attached to her, and all the world to spoil her, she 
passed a great deal of time with Mrs. Weston, of the Priory, 
who took a great affection for the child even before she lost 
her own daughter. I have said that good masters were here 
found for her. She learned to speak English as a native, of 
course, and French and music from the fathers who always were 
about the house. Whatever the child’s expenses or wants were, 
M. de la Motte generously defrayed them. After his journeys 
he would bring her back toys, sweetmeats, knick*knacks fit for 
a little duchess. She lorded it over great and small in the 
Priory, in the Perriiqiury,, as we may call my mother’s house, 
ay, and in the Rectory too, where Dr. and Mrs. Barnard were 
her very humble servants, like all the rest of us. 

And here I may as well tell you that I was made to become 
a member of the Church of England, because mother took huff 
at our French Protestants, who would continue persecuting her 
for harboring the Papists, and insisted that between the late 
poor Countess and the Chevalier there had been an unlawful 
intimacy. M. Borel, our pastor, preached at poof mother 
several times, she said. I did not understand his inuendoes, 
being a simple child, I fear not caring much for sermons in 
those d^s. For grandpapa’s I know 1 did not ; he used to 
give us half an hour at morning, and half an hour at evening. 
I could not help thinking of grandfather skipping out of the 
copper, and calling on us to spare his life on the day of the 
funeral ; and his preaching went in at one ear and out at t’other. 
One day — Apropos of some pomatum which a customer wanted 
to buy, and which ! know mother made with lard and bergamot 
herself — I heard him tell such a fib to a customer, that some- 
how I never could respect the old man afterwards. He actually 
said the pomatum had just come to him from France direct — 
from the Dauphin’s own hairdresser : and our neighbor, I dare 
say, would have bought it, but I said, “Oh, grandpapa, you 
must mean some other pomatum ! I saw mother make this 
with her own hands.” Grandfather actually began to cry when 
I said this. He said I was being his death. He asked that 
somebody should fetch him out and hang him that moment. 
Why is there no bear, says he, to eat that little monster’s head 


I HEAR THE SOUND OF BOW BELLS, 647 

off and destroy that prodigy of crime ? Nay, I used to think 
I was a monster sometimes : he would go on so fiercely about 
my wickedness and perverseness. 

Doctor Barnard was passing by our pole one day, and our 
open door, when grandfather was preaching upon this sin of 
mine, with a strap in one hand, laying over my shoulders in the 
intervals of the discourse. Down goes the strap in a minute, 
as the Doctor’s lean figure makes its appearance at the door ; 
and grandfather begins to smirk and bow, and hope his rever- 
ence was well. My heart was full. I had had sermon in the 
morning, ^nd sermon at night, and strapping every day that 
week ; and heaven help me, I loathed that old man, and loathe 
him still. 

How can I, sir,’’ says I, bursting out into a passion of tears 
— ‘^How can I honor my grandfather and mother if grandfather 

tells such d lies as he does } ” And I stamped my feet, 

trembling with wrath and indignation at the disgrace put upon 
me. I then burst out with my story, which there was no con- 
troverting ; and 1 will say grandfather looked at me as if he 
would kill me ; and I ended my tale sobbing at the Doctor’s 
knees. 

“ Listen, Mr. Duval,” says Dr. Barnard, very sternly : T 
know a great deal more than you think about you and your 
doings. My advice to you is to treat this child well, and to 
leave off some practices which will get you into trouble, as sure 
as your name is what it is. I know where your pigeons go to, 
and where they come from. And some day, when I have you 
in my justice-room, we shall see whether I will show you any 
more mercy than you have shown to this child. I know yoy to 
be * * * ” and the Doctor whispered something into 

grandfather’s ears and stalked away. 

Can you guess by what name the Doctor called my grand- 
father ? If he called him hypocrite, ma foL he was not far 
wrong. But the truth is, he called him smuggler, and that w^as 
a name which fitted hundreds of people, along our coast, I 
promise you. At Hythe, at Folkestone, at Dover, Deal, Sand- 
wich, there were scores and scores of these gentry. All the 
way to London they had depots, friends, and correspondents. 
Inland and along the Thames there were battles endless be- 
tween them and the revenue people. Our friends “ the mack- 
erel,” who came out at Monsieur de la Motte’s summons, of 
course were of this calling. One day when he came home from 
one of his expeditions, I remember jumping forward to welcome 
him, for he was at one time very kind to me, and as I ran into 


DENIS DUVAL. 


648 

his arms he started back, and shrieked out an oath and a sacri- 
bleu or two. He was wounded in the arm. There had been a 
regular battle at Deal between the dragoons and revenue 
officers on the one side, and the smugglers and their friends. 
Cavalry had charged cavalry, and Monsieur de la Motte (his 
smuggling name, he told me aherwards, was Mr. Paul, or Pole) 
had fought on the jnackerel side. 

So were my gentlemen at the Priory of the Mackerel party. 
Why, I could name you great names of merchants and bankers 
at Canterbury, Dover, Rochester, who were engaged in this 
traffic. My grandfather, you see, howled with the wolves ; but 
then he used to wear a snug la77ib' s-s kin over his wolf’s hide. 
Ah, shall I thank Heaven like the Pharisee, that I am not as 
those men are } I hope there is no harm in being thankful 
that I have been brought out of temptation ; that I was not 
made a rogue at a child’s age ; and that I did not come to the 
gallows as a man. Such a fate has befallen more than one of 
the precious friends of my youth, as I shall have to relate in 
due season. 

That habit I had of speaking out everything that was on my 
mind brought me, as a child, into innumerable scrapes, but I do 
thankfully believe has preserved me from still greater. What 
could you do with a little chatterbox, who, when his grandfather 
offered to sell a^ pot of pomatum as your true Pommade de 
Cyth^re, must cry out, “ No, grandpapa, mother made it with 
marrow and bergamot ? ” If anything happened which I was 
not to mention, I was sure to blunder out some account of it. 
Good Doctor Barnard, and my patron Captain Denis (who was 
a great friend of our rector), I suppose used to joke about this 
propensity of mine, and would laugh for ten minuTes together, 
as I told my stories ; and I think the Doctor had a serious con- 
versation with my mother on the matter ; for she said, “ He has 
reason. The boy shall not go anymore. We will try and have 
one honest man in the family.” 

Go any xnox^zvherel Now I will tell you (and I am much 
' more ashamed of this than of the barber’s pole. Monsieur mon 
Ills, that I can promise you). When 1 was boarding at the 
grocer’s at Rye, I and other boys were constantly down at the 
water, and we learned to manage a boat pretty early. Rudge 
did not go out himself, being rheumatic and lazy, but his ap- 
prentice would be absent frequently all night ; and on more 
than one occasion I went out as odd boy in the boat to put my 
hand to anything. 

Those pigeons 1 spoke of anon came from Boulogne. 


/ 


/ THE SOUND OF BOW BELLS. 


649 


When one arrived he brought a signal that our Boulogne cor- 
respondent was on his way, and we might be on the look-out. 
The French boat would make for a point agreed upon, and we 
lie off until she came. We took cargo from her : barrels with- 
out number, I remember. Once we saw her chased away by a 
revenue-cutter. Once the same ship fired at us. I did not 
know what the balls were, which splashed close alongside of 
us ; but I remember the apprentice of Rudge’s (he used to 
make love to Miss R., and married her afterwards,) singing out, 
“ Lord, have mercy,^’ in an awful consternation, and the Cheva- 
lier crying out, “ Hold your tongue, miserable ! You were 
never born to be drowned or shot.” He had some hesitation 
about taking me out on this expedition. He was engaged ia 
running smuggled goods, that is the fact ; and “ smuggler ” was 
the word which Doctor Barnard whispered in my grandfather’s 
ear. If we were hard pressed at certain points which we knew, 
and could ascertain by cross-bearings which we took, we would 
sink our kegs till a more convenient time, and then return and 
drag for them, and bring them up with line and grapnel. 

I certainly behaved much better when we were fired at, than 
that oaf of a Bevil, who lay howling his “ Lord, have mercy 
upon us,” at the bottom of the boat ; iDut somehow the Cheva- 
lier discouraged my juvenile’ efforts- in the smuggling line, from 
his fear of that unlucky tongue of mine, which would blab 
everything I knew. I may have been out afishmg half a dozen 
times in all ; but especially after we had been fired at. La Motte 
was for leaving me at home. My mother was averse, too, to 
my becoming a seaman (a smuggler) by profession. Her aim 
was to make a gentleman of me, she said, and I am most un- 
feignedly thankful to her for keeping me out of mischief’s way. 
Had I been permitted to herd along with the black sheep. 
Doctor Barnard would never have been so kind to me as he 
was ; and indeed that good man showed me the greatest favor. 
When I came home from school he would often have me to the 
Rectory, and hear me my lessons, and he was pleased to say I 
was a lively boy of good parts. _ ' 

The Doctor received rents for his college at Oxford, which 
has considerable property in these parts, and twice a year would 
go to London and pay the moneys over. In my boyish times 
these journeys to London were by no means without danger ; 
and if you will take a Gefitlemaii’ s Magazine from the shelf you 
will find a highway robbery or two in every month’s chronicle. 
We boys at school were never tired of talking of highwaymen 
and their feats. As I often had to walk over to Rye from home 


DENIS DUVAL. 


650 

of a night (so as to be in time for early morning school), I must 
needs buy a little brass-barrelled pistol, with which I practised 
in secret, and which I had to hide, lest mother or Rudge, or the 
schoolmaster, should take it away from me. Once as I was 
talking with a school-fellow, and vaporing about what we would 
do, were we attacked, I fired my pistol and shot away a piece 
of his coat. I might have hit his stomach, not his coat — heaven 
be good to us ! — and this accident made me more careful in the 
use of my artillery. And now I used to practise with small 
shot instead jof bullets, and pop at sparrows whenever I could 
get a chance. 

At Michaelmas, in the year 1776 (I promise you I remember 
the year), my dear and kind friend. Doctor Barnard, having to 
go to London with his rents, proposed to take me to London to 
see my other patron. Sir Peter Denis, between whom and the 
Doctor there was a great friendship ; and it is to those dear 
friends that I owe the great good fortune which has befallen me 
in life. Indeed, when I think of what I might have been, and 
of what I have escaped, my heart is full of thankfulness for the 
great mercies which have fallen to my share. Well, at this 
happy and eventful Michaelmas of 1776, Doctor Barnard says 
to me, “Denis, my child, if thy mother will grant leave, I have 
a mind to take thee to see thy godfather. Sir Peter Denis, in 
London. I am going up with my rents, my neighbor Weston 
will share the horses with me, and thou shalt see the Tower 
and Mrs. Salmon’s wax-work before thou art a week older.” 

You may suppose that this proposition made- Master Denis 
Duval junfp for joy. Of course I had heard of London all my 
life, and talked with people who had been there, but that I 
should go myself to Admiral Sir Peter Denis’s house, and see 
the play, St. Paul’s, and Mrs. Salmon’s, here was a height of 
bliss I never had hoped to attain. I could not sleep for think- 
ing of my pleasure ; I had some money, and I promised to buy 
as many toys for Agnes as the Chevalier used to bring her. 
My mother said I should go like a gentleman, and turned me 
out in a red waistcoat with plate buttons, a cock to my hat, and 
ruffles to my shirts. How I counted the hours of the night 
before our departure ! I was up before the dawn, packing my 
little valise. 1 got my little brass-barrelled pocket-pistol, and I 
loaded it with shot. I put it away into my breast-pocket ; and 
if we met with a highwayman I promised myself he should have 
my charge of lead in his face. The Doctor’s post-chaise was at 
his stables not very far from us. The stable lanterns were 
alight, and Brown, the Doctor’s man, cleaning the carriage. 


•I HEAR THE SOUND OF BOW BELLS, 651 

when Mr. Denis Duval comes up to the stable door, lugginghis 
portmanteau after him through the twilight. Was ever daylight 
so long a coming ? Ah ! There come the horses at last ; the 
horses from the King’s Head,” and old Pascoe, the one-eyed 
postilion. How well I remember the sound of their hoofs in 
that silent street 1 I can tell everything that happened on that 
day ; what we had for dinner — viz., veal cutlets and French 
•beans, at Maidstone; where we changed horses, and the color 
of the horses. “ Here, Brown ! Here’s my portmanteau ! I 
say, where shall I stow it ? ” My portmanteau was about as 
large as a good-sized apple-pie. I jump into the carriage and 
we drive up to the Rectory : and I think the Doctor will never 
come out. There he is at last : with his mouth full of buttered 
toast, and I bob my head to him a hundred times out of the 
chaise window. Then I must jump out, forsooth. ‘‘ Brown, 
shall I give you a hand with the luggage ” says I, and I dare 
say they all laugh. Well, I am so happy that anybody may 
laugh who likes. The Doctor comes out, his precious box 
> under his arm. I see dear Mrs. Barnard’s great cap nodding at 
!<»us out of the parlor window as we drive away from. the Rectory 
door to stop a hundred yards farther on at the Priory. 

There at the parlor window stands my dear little Agnes, in 
a white frock, m a great cap with a blue ribbon and bow, and 
curls clustering over her face. I wish Sir Joshua Reynolds had 
painte^ thee in those days, my dear : but thou wert the very 
image of one of his little ladies, that one who became Duchess 
of Buccleuch afterwards. There is my Agnes,. and now pres- 
ently comes out Mr. Weston’s man and luggage, and it is fixed 
on the roof. Him, his master, Mr. George Weston, follows. 
This was the most good-natured of the two, and I shall never 
forget my sensation of delhght, when I saw him bring out two 
holster-pistols, which he placed each in a pocket of the chaise. 
Is Tommy Chapman, the apothecary’s son of Westgate, alive 
yet, and does he remember my wagging my head to him as our 
chaise whirled by 1 He was shaking a mat at the door of his 
father’s shop as my lordship accompanied by my noble friends 
passed by. 

First stage. Ham Street, ‘‘The Bear.” A gray horse and a 
bay to change, / remember them. Second stage, Ashford. 
Third stage * * * I think I am asleep about the third 

stage : and no wonder, a poor little wretch who had been awake 
half the night before, and no doubt many nights previous, think- 
ing of this wonderful journey. Fourth stage, Maidstone, “The 
Bell,” “And here we will stop to dinner, Master Shriihp- 


DENTS DUVAL, 


652 

catcher,’’ says the Doctor, and I jump down out of the carriage 
nothing loth. The Doctor followed with his box, of which he 
never lost sight. 

The Doctor liked his ease in his inn, and took his sip of j 
punch so comfortably, that I, for my part, thought he never 
would be gone. I was out in the stables and looking at the j 
horses, and talking to the ostler who was rubbing his nags down, i 
I dare say I had a peep into the kitchen, and at the pigeons in 
the inn yard, and at all the things which were to be seen at i 
The Bell,” while my two companions were still at their inter- 
minable punch. It was an old-fashioned inn, with a gallery 
round the court-yard. Heaven bless us ! Falstaff and Bar- 
dolph may have stopped there on the road to Gadshill. I was 
in the stable looking at the nags, when Mr. Weston comes out 
^ of the inn, looks round the court, opens the door of the post- 
chaise, takes out his pistols, looks at the priming, and puts them 
back a*gain. Then we are off again, and time , enough too. It 
seemed to me many hours since we had arrived at that creaking 
old “Bell.” And away we go through Addington, Eynesford, 
by miles andjniles of hop-gardens. I dare say I did not logk' 
at the prospect much, beautiful though it might be, my young 
eyes being forever on the look-out for St. Paul’s and London. 

For a great part of the way Doctor Barnard and his com- 
panion had a fine controversy about their respective religions, 
for which each was alike zealous. Nay : it may be the rector 
invited Mr. Weston to take a place in his post-chaise in order 
to have this battle^ for he never tired of arguing the question 
between the two churches. .Towards the close of the day 
Master Denis Duval fell asleep on Dr. Barnard’s shoulder, and 
the good-natured clergyman did not disturb him. 

I woke up with the sudden stoppage of the carriage. The | 
evening was falling. We were upon a lonely common, and a 
man on horseback was at the window of the post-chaise. 

“ Give us out that there box ! and your money ! ” I heard 
him say in a very gruff voice. O heavens ! we were actually 
stopped by a highwayiTian ! It was delightful. 

Mr. Weston jumped at his pistols very quick. “ Here’s our 
money, you scoundrel ! ” sa37s he, and he fired point-blank at 
the rogue’s head. Confusion ! The pistol missed fire. He 
aimed the second, and again no report followed ! 

“ Some scoundrel has been tampering with these,” says Mr. 
Weston, aghast. 

“Come,” says Captain Macheath, “come, your ” 

But the next word the fellow spoke was a frightful oath ; iot 


/ THE SOUND OF BOW BELLS. 653 

I took out my little pistol, which was full of shot, and fired it 
into his face. The man reeled,.and I thought would have fallen 
out of his saddle; The postilion, frightened no doubt, clapped 
spurs to his horse, and began to gallop. “ Sha’n’t we stop and 
take that rascal, sir ? ” said I to the Doctor. On which Mr. 
Weston gave a' peevish kind of push at me, and said, “ No, no. 
It is getting quite dark. Let^ us push on.’^ And, indeed, the 
highwayman’s horse had taken fright, and we could see him 
galloping away across the common. 

I was so elated to think that I, a little boy, had shot a live 
highwayman, that I dare say I bragged outrageously of my 
action. We set down Mr. Weston at his inn in the Borough, 
and crossed London Bridge, and thereT was in London at last. 
Yes, and that was the Monument, and the'n we came to the 
Exchange, and yonder, yonder was St. Paul’s. We went up 
Holborn, and so, to Ormond Street, where my patron lived in a 
noble mansion ; and where his wife, my Lady Denis, received 
me with a great deal of kindness. You may be sure the battle 
with the highwayman was fought over again, and I got due 
credit from myself and others for my gallantry. 

Sir Peter and his lady introduced me to a number of their 
acquaintances as the little boy who shot the highwayman. 
They received a great deal of company, and I was frequently 
had in to their dessert. I suppose I must own that my home 
was below in the housekeeper’s room -with Mrs. Jellicoe ; 
but my lady took such a fancy to me that she continually had 
me up stairs, took me out driving in her chariot, or ordered one 
of the footmen to take me to the sights of the town, and sent 
me in his charge to the play. It was the last year Garrick per- 
formed ; and I saw him in the play of Macbeth, in a gold-laced 
blue coat, with scarlet plush waistcoat and breeches. Ormond 
Street, Bloomsbury, was on the outskirts of the town then, with 
open country behind, stretching as far as Hampstead. Bed- 
ford House, north of Bloomsbury Square, with splendid 
gardens, was close by, and Montague House, where I saw 
stuffed camelopards, and all sorts of queer things from foreign 
countries. Then there were the Tower, and the Wax-work, and 
Westminster Abbey, and Vauxhall. What a glorious week of 
pleasure it was ! At the week’s end the kind Doctor went home 
again, and all those dear kind people gave me presents, and 
cakes, and money, and spoilt the little boy who shot the high- 
wayman. 

The affair was actually put into the newspapers, and who 
should come to hear of it but my gracious Sovereign himself. 


DENIS DUVAL 


654 

One day, Sir Peter Denis took me to see Kew Gardens and the 
new Chinese pagoda her Majesty had put up. Whilst walking 
here, and surveying this pretty place, 1 had the good fortune 
to see his M-j-sty, walking with our most gracious Qu— n, the 
Pr-nce of W — s, the Bishop of Osnahiirg, my namesake, and, I 
think, two, or it may be three, of the Princesses. Her M-j-sty 
knew Sir Peter from having sailed with him, saluted him very 
graciously, and engaged him in conversation. And the Best of 
Monarchs, looking towards his humblest subject and ser\'ant, 
said, “What, what? Little boy shot the highwayman. Shot 
him in the face. Shot him in the face ! ’’ On which the 
youthful Pr-nces graciously looked towards me, and the king 
asking Sir Peter what my profession was to be, the admiral said 
I hoped to be a sailor and serve his Majesty. 

I promise you I was a mighty grand personage when I went 
home \ and both at Rye and Winchelsea scores of people asked 
me what the King said. On our return, we heard of an acci- 
dent which had happened to Mr. Joseph Weston, which ended 
most unhappily for that gentleman. On the very day when we 
set out for London he went out shooting — a sport of which he 
was very fond ; but in climbing a hedge, and dragging his gun , 
incautiously after him, the lock caught in a twig, and the piece 
discharged itself into the poor gentleman’s face, lodging a 
number of shot into his left cheek, and into his eye, of which 
he lost the sight, after suffering much pain and torture. 

“ Bless my soul ! A charge of small shot in his face ! 
What an extraordinary thing ! ” cries Dr. Barnard, who came 
down to* see mother and grandfather the day after our return 
home. Mrs. Barnard had told him of the accident at supper 
on the night previous. Had he been shot or shot some one 
himself, the Doctor could scarce have looked more scared. 
He put me in mind of Mr. Garrick, whom i had just seen at 
the playhouse, London, when he comes out after murdering the 
King. 

“ You look, Docteur, as if you done it yourself,” says M. 
de la Motte, laughing, and in his ^^nglish jargon. ' “Two time, 
three time, I say, Weston, you shoot youself, you carry , you 
gun that way, and he say he not born to be shot, and he 
swear ! ” 

“ But, my good Chevalier, Doctor Blades picked some bits 
of crape out of his eye, and thirteen or fourteen shot. What is 
the size of your shot, Denny, with which you fired at the high- 
wayman ? ” 

“ Quid autem vides festucam in oculo fratris tui, Doctor ? ’* 


/ HEAR THE SOUND OF BOW BELLS. 


6SS 

says the Chevalier; ‘‘that is good doctrine — Protestant or 
Popish, eh ? On which the Doctor held down his head, 
and said, “Chevalier, I am corrected; I was wrong — very 
wrong/^ 

“And as for crape,’* La Motte resumed, “Weston is in 
mourning. He go to funeral at Canterbury four days ago. 
Yes, he tell me so. He and my friend Liitterloh go.” This 
Mr. Liitterloh was a German living near Canterbury, with whom 
M. de la Motte had dealings. He had dealings with all sorts 
of people ; and very queer dealings, too, as I began to under- 
stand now that I was a stout boy approaching fourteen years 
of age, and standing pretty tall in my shoes. v 

De la Motte laughed then at the Doctor’s suspicions. “ Par- 
sons and women all the same, save your respect, ma bonne 
Madame Duval, all tell tales ; all believe evil of their neighbors. 
I tell you I see Weston shoot twenty, thirty time. Always drag 
his gun through hedge.” 

“ But the crape ? ” 

“ Bah ! Always in mourning, Weston is ! For shame of 
your cancans^ little Denis ! Never think such thing again. 
Don’t make Weston your enemy. If a man say that of me, I 
wbuld shoot him myself, parbleu 1 ” 

“ But if he has done it ? ” 

“ Parbleu ! I would shoot him so much ze mor ! ” says the 
Chevalier, with a'stamp of his foot. And the first time he saw 
me alone he reverted to the subject. “ Listen, Denisot ! ” says 
he : “ thou becomest a great boy. Take my counsel, and hold 
thy tongue. This suspicion against Mr. Joseph is a monstrous 
crime, as well as a folly. A man say that of me — right or 
wrong — I burn him the brain. Once I come home, and you run 
against me, and I cry out, and swear and pest. I was wounded 
myself, I deny it not.” 

“ And I said nothing, sir,” I interposed. 

“ No, I do thee justice : thou didst say nothing. You know 
the metier we make sometimes ? That night in the boat ” (“ zat 
night in ze boat,” he used to say), “ when the revenue cutter 
fire, and your poor camarade howl — ah, how he howl — you don’t 
suppose we were there to look for lobstarepot, eh ? Tu n’as 
pas bronchd, toi. You did not crane ; you show yourself a man 
of heart. And now, petit, apprends h. te taire 1 ” And he gave" 
me a shake of the hand, and a couple of guineas in it too, and 
went off to his stables on his business. He had two or three 
horses now, and was always on the trot ; he was very liberal 
with his money, and used to have handsome entertainments in 


DENIS DUVAL. 


656 

his up stairs room, and never quarrelled about the bills which 
mother sent in. “ Hold thy tongue, Denisot,’’ said he. “ Never 
tell who comes in or who goes out. And mind thee, child, if 
thy tongue wags, little birds come whisper me, and say, ‘ He 
tell.’ ” 

I tried to obey his advice, and to rein in that truant tongue 
of mine. When Dr. and Mrs. Barnard themselves asked me 
questions I was mum, and perhaps rather disappointed the good 
lady and the rector too by my reticence. For instance, Mrs. 
Barnard would say, “ That was a nice goose I saw going from 
market to your house, Denny.” 

‘‘Goose is very nice, ma’am,” says I. 

“ The Chevalier often has* dinners ? ” 

“ Dines every day, regular, ma’am.” 

“ Sees the Westons a great deal ? ” 

“ Yes, ma’am,” I say, with an indescribable heart-pang. 
And the cause of that pang I may as well tell. You see, though 
I was only thirteen years old, and Agnes but eight, I loved that 
little maid with all my soul and strength. Boy or man 1 never 
loved any other woman. I write these very words by my study 
fire in Fareport with madam opposite dozing over her novel till 
the neighbors shall come in to tea and their rubber. When my 
ink is run out, and my little tale is written, and yonder church 
that is ringing to seven o’clock prayer shall toll for a certain 
D, D., you will please, good neighbors, to remember that I never 
loved any but yonder lady, and keep a place by Darby for Joan, 
when her turn shall arrive. 

Now in the last year or two, since she had been adopted at 
the Priory, Agnes came less and less often to see us. She did 
not go to church with us, being a Catholic. She learned from 
the good fathers her tutors. She learned music and French 
and dancing to perfection. All the county could not show a 
finer little lady. When she came to our shop, it was indeed a 
little countess honoring us with a visit. Mother was gentle 
before her — grandfather obsequious — I, of course, her most 
humble little servant. Wednesday (a half-holiday), and half 
Saturday, and all Sunday I might come home from school, and 
how 1 used to trudge, and how I longed to see that little maiden, 
any gentleman may imagine who has lost his heart to an Agnes 
of his own. 

The first day of my arrival at home, after the memorable 
London journey, I presented myself at the Priory, with my 
pocket full of presents for Agnes. The footman let me into 
the hall civilly enough : but the young lady was out with Mrs. 
Weston in the post-chaise. I might leave my message. 


I HEAR THE SOUND OF BO PV BELLS. 


657 

I wanted to give my message. Somehow, in that fortnight’s 
absence from home, I had so got to long after Agnes that I 
never had my little sweetheart quite out of my mind. It may 
have been a silly thing, but I got a little pocket-book, and wrote 
in French a journal of all I saw in London. I dare say there 
were some pretty faults in grammar. I remember a fine para- 
graph about my meeting the royal personages at Kew, and all 
their names written down in order ; and this little pocket-book 
I must needs send to Mademoiselle de Saverne. 

The next day I called again. Still Mademoiselle de Saverne 
was not to be seen : but in the evening the servant brought a 
little note from her, in which she thanked her dear brother for 
his beautiful book. That was some consolation. She liked 
the pocket-book, anyhow. I wonder can you young people 
guess what I did to it before I sent it away ? Yes, I did. 
“ One, tree, feefty time,” as the Chevalier would say. The next 
morning, quite early, 1 had to go back to school, having prom- 
ised the Doctor to work hard after my holiday ; and work I did 
with a will, at my French and my English, and my Navigation. 
I thought Saturday would never come : but it did at last, and I 
trotted as quick as legs would carry me from school to Winchel- 
sea. My legs were growing apace now ; and especially as they 
took me homewards, few could outrun them. 

All good women are match-makers at heart. My dear Mrs. 
Barnard saw quite soon what my condition of mind was, and 
was touched by my boyish fervor. I called once, twice, thrice, 
at the Priory, and never could get a sight of Miss Agnes. The 
servant used to shrug her shoulders and laugh at 'me in an in- 
solent way, and the last time said — “You need not call any 
more. We don’t want our hair cut here, nor no pomatum, nor 
no soap, do you understand that } ” and she slammed the door 
in my face. I was stunned by this insolence, and beside myself 
with rage and mortification. I went to Mrs. Barnard, and told 
her what had happened to me. I burst into tears of passion 
and grief as I flung myself on a sofa by the good ladies. I told 
her how I had rescued little Agnes, how I loved the little thing 
better than all the world. I spoke my heart out, and eased it 
somewhat, for the good lady wiped her eyes more than once, 
,and finished by giving me a-kiss. She did more ; she invited 
me to tea with her on the next Wednesday when I came home 
from school, and who should be there but little Agnes. She 
blushed very much. Then she came towards me. Then she 
held up her little cheek to be kissed, and then she cried — oh, 
how she did cry ! There were three people whimppring in that 

42 


DENIS DUVAL. 


658 

room. (How well 1 recollect it opening into the garden, and the 
little old blue dragon teacups and silver pot !) There were 
three persons, I say, crying: a lady of fifty, a boy of thirteen, 
and a little girl of seven years of age. Can you guess'what 
happened next ? Of course the lady of fifty remembered that 
she had forgotten her- spectacles, and went up stairs to fetch 
them ; and then the little maiden began to open her heart to 
me, and told her dear Denny how she’ had been longing to see 
him, and how they were very angry with him at the Priory ; so 
angry that his nam^ was never to be spoken. ‘‘ The Chevalier 
said that, and so did the gentlemen — especially Mr. Joseph, 
who had been dreadful since his accident, and one day (says my 
dear) when you called, he was behind the door with a great 
horsewhip, and said he would let you in, and flog your soul out 
of your body, only Mrs. Weston cried, and Mr. George said, 
‘Don’t be a fool, Joe.’ But something you have done to Mr. 
Joseph, dear Denny, and when your name is mentioned, he 
rages and swears so that it is dreadful to hear him. What can 
make the gentleman so angry with you ? ” 

“ So he actually was waiting with a horsewhip, was he ? In 
that case I know what I would do. I would never go about 
without my pistol. I have hit one fellow,” said I, “ and if any 
other man threatens me I will defend myself.” % 

My dear Agnes said that they were very kind to her at the 
Priory, although she could not bear Mr. Joseph — that they gave 
her good masters, that she was to go to a good school kept by 
a Catholic lady at Arundel. And oh, how she wished her Denny 
would turn Catholic, and she prayed for him always, always ! 
And for that matter I know some one who never night or morn-' 
ing on his knees has forgotten that little maiden. The father 
used to come and give her lessons three or four times in the 
week, and she used to learn her lessons by heart, walking up 
and down in the great green walk in the kitchen-garden every 
rhorning at eleven o’clock. 1 knew the kitchen-garden ! the 
wall was in North Lane, one of the old walls of the convent : 
at the end of the green walk there was a pear-tree. And that 
was where she always went to learn her lessons. 

And here, I suppose, Mrs. Barnard returned to the room, 
having found her spectacles. And a's I take mine off my nose 
and shut my eyes, that well-remembered scene of boyhood passes 
before them — that garden basking in the autumn evening — that 
little maiden A^ith peachy cheeks, and glistening curls, that dear 
and kind old lady, who says, “ ’Tis time now, children, you 
should go home,” 


I ESCAPE FROM A GREAT DANGER. 659 

I had to go to school that night ; but before I went I ran 
up North Lane and saw the old wall arid the pear-tree behind 
it. And do yow know I thought I would try and get up the 
wall, and easy enough it was to find a footing between those 
crumbling old stones ; and when on the top I could look down 
from the branches of the tree into the garden below, and see 
the house at the farther end. So that was the broad walk where 
Agnes learned her lessons? Master Denis Duval pretty soon 
had that lesson by heart. 

Yes : but one day in the Christmas holidays, when there was 
a bitter frost, and the stones and the wall were so slippery that 
Mr. D. D. tore his fingers and his small-clothes in climbing to 
his point of observation, it happened that little Agnes was not 
sitting unaer the tree learning her lessons, and none but an 
idiot would have supposed that she would have come out on 
such a day. 

But who should be in the garden, pacing up and down the 
walk all white with hoar-frost, but Joseph Weston with his patch 
over his eye. Unluckily he had one eye left with which he ‘ciw 
me ; and the next moment I heard the report of a tremendous 
oath, and then a brickbat came whizzing at my head, so close 
that, had it struck me, it%ould have knocked out my eye7and 
my brains too. 

I was down the wall in a moment : it was slippery enough ; 
and two or three more brickbats came d mon adresse, but luckily 
failed to hit their mark. 


CHAPTER VI. 

1 ESCAPE FROM A GREAT DANGER. 

• 

I SPOKE of the affair of the brickbats^ at home, to Monsieur 
de la Motte only, not caring to tell mother, lest she should be 
inclined to resume her box-on-the-ear practice, for which I 
thought I was growing too old. Indeed, I had become a great 
boy. There were not half a dozen out of the sixty at Pocock’s 
who could beat me when I was thirteen years old, and from 
these champions, were they ever so big, I never would submit 
^ to a thrashing, without a fight on my part, in which, though I 
might get the worst, I was pretty sure to leave some ugly marks 
on my adversary’s nose and eyes. 1 remember one lad espe- 


66o 


DENIS DUVAL, 


cially, Tom Parrot by name, who was three years older than 
myself, and whom I could no more beat than a frigate can beat 
a seventy-four ; but we engaged nevertheless, a#d, after we had 
had some rounds together, Tom put one hand in his pocket, and, 
with a queer face and a great black eye I had ^iven him, says — 
“Well, Denny, I could do it — you know I could : but I’m so 
lazy, I don’t care about going on.” And one of the bottle- 
holders beginning to jeer, Tom fetches him such a rap on the 
ear, that I promise you he showed no inclination for laughing 
afterwards. By the way, that knowledge of the noble art of 
fisticuffs which I learned at school, I had to practise at sea 
presently, in the cockpit of more than one of his Majesty’s' 
ships of war. 

In respect of the slapping and caning at home, I think M. 
de la Motte remonstrated with my mother, and represented to 
her that I was now too old for that kind of treatment. Indeed, 
when I was fourteen, I was as tall as grandfather, and in a 
tussle I am sure I could have tripped his old heels up easily 
enough, and got the better of him in five minutes. Do I speak 
of him with undue familiarity 1 I pretend no love for him ; I 
never could have any respect. Some of his practices which I 
knew of made me turn from him, affti his loud professions only 
increased my distrust. Afonsieur 7no7i Jtls^ i£. ever you marry, 
and have a son, I hope the little chap will have an honest man 
for a grandfather, and that you will be able to say, “ I loved 
him,” when the daisies cover me. 

La Motte, then, caused “ the abolition of torture ” in our 
house, and I was grateful to him. I had the queerest feelings 
towards that man. He was a perfect fine gentleman when h^ 
so wished : of his money most liberal, witty (in a dry, c?:uel 
sort of way) — most tenderly attached to Agnes. Eh bwi ! As 
I looked at his yellow, handsome face, cold shudders would 
^ come over me, though at this time I did not know that Agnes’s 
father had fallen by his fatal hand. 

When I informed him of Mr. Joe Weston’s salute of brick- 
bats, he looked very grave. And I told him then, too, a thing 
which had struck me most forcibly — viz. that the shout which 
Weston gave, and the oath which he uttered when he saw me 
on the wall, were precisely like the oath and execration uttered 
by the 7naJi with the craped face,, at whom I fired from the post- 
chaise. 

“ Bah, b^tise ! ” says La Motte. “ What didst thou on the 
wall ? One does not steal pears at thy age.” 

I dare say I turned red. “ I heard somebody’s voice,” I 


/ ESCAPE FPOM A GREA T DANGER. 


66l 


said. “ In fact, I heard Agnes singing in the garden, and — ■ 
and I got on the wall to see her.^’ 

“ What, you — you, a little barber’s boy, climb a wall to 
speak to Mademoiselle Agnes de Saverne, of one of the most 
noble houses of Lorraine ? ” La Motte yelled, with a savage 
laugh. “ Parbleu ! Monsieur Weston has well done ! ” 

“ Sir ! ” said I, in a towering rage, “ barber as I am, my 
fathers were honorable Protestant clergymen- in Alsace, and 
we are as good as highwaymen at any rate ! Barber, indeed ! ” 
I say again. “ And now I am ready to swear that the man 
who swore at me, and the man I shot on the road, are one and 
the same ; and I’ll go to Dr. Barnard’s, and swear it before 
him I ” 

The Chevalier looked aghast, and threatening for awhile. 
“Tu me menaces, je crois, petit manant ! ” says he, grinding 
his teeth. ‘‘This is too strong. Listen, Denis Duval ! Hold 
thy tongue, or evil will come to thee. Thou wilt make for thy- 
self enemies the most unscrupulous, and the most terrible — do 
you hear ? I have placed Mademoiselle Agnes de Saverne 
with that admirable woman. Mistress Weston, because she can 
meet at the Priory with society more fitting her noble birth 
than that which she will find under your grandfather’s pole — 
parbleu. Ah, you dare mount on wall to look for Mademoi- 
selle de Saverne Gare aux manstraps, mon gargon ! Vive 
Dieu, if I see thee on that wall, I will fire on thee, moi le pre- 
mier! You pretend to Mademoiselle Agnes. Ha! ha ! ha ! ” 
And he grinned and looked like that cloven-iooX,^6. gentleman of 
whom Dr. Barnard talked. 

I felt that henceforward there was war between La Motte 
and me. At this time I had suddenly shot up to be a young 
man, and was not the obedient, prattling child of last year. I 
told grandfather that I would bear no more punishment, such 
as the old man had been accustomed to bestow upon me ; and 
once when my mother lifted her hand, I struck it up, and 
griped it so tight that I frightened her. From that very day 
she never raised a hand to me. Nay, I think she was not ill- 
pleased, and soon actually began to spoil me. Nothing was 
too good for me. I know where the silk came from which 
made my fine new waistcoat, and the cambric for my ruffled 
shirts, but very much doubt whether they ever paid any duty. 
As I walked to church, I dare say I cocked my hat, and strutted 
very consequentially. When Tom Biilis, the baker’s ‘ boy, 
jeered at my fine clothes, “ Tom,” says I, “ I will take my coat 
and waistcoat off for half an hour on Monday, and give thee a 


662 


DENIS DUVAL. 


beating if thou hast a mind ; but to-day let us be at peace, and 
go to church/’ 

On the matter of church I am not going to make any boast. 
That awful subject lies between a man and his conscience. I 
have known men of lax faith pure and just in their lives, as 1 
have met very loud-professing Christians loose in their moral' 
ity, and hard and unjust in their dealings. There was a little 
old man at home — heaven help him ! — who was of this sort, 
and who, when 1 came to know his life, would put me into such 
a rage of revolt whilst preaching his daily and nightly serirvons, 
that it is a wonder I was not enlisted among the scoffers and 
evil-doers altogether. I have known many a young man fall 
away, and become utterly reprobate, because the bond of dis- 
cipline was tied too tightly upon him, and because he has 
found the preacher who was perpetually prating over him lax 
in his own conduct. I am thankful, then, that I had a better 
instructor than my old grandfather with his strap and his cane ; 
and was brought (I hope and trust) to a right state of thinking 
by a man whose brain was wise, as his life was excellently 
benevolent and pure. This was my good friend Dr. Barnard, 
and to this day I remember the conversations I had with him, 
and am quite sure they influenced my future life. Had I been 
altogether reckless and as lawless as many people of our 
acquaintance and neighborhood, he would have ceased to feel 
any interest in me ; and instead of wearing his Majesty’s epau- 
lets (which I trust I have not disgraced), I might have been 
swabbing a smuggler’s boat, or riding in a night caravan, with 
kegs beside me and pistols and cutlasses to defend me, as that 
unlucky La Motte owned for his part that he had done. My 
good mother, though she gave up the practice of smuggling, 
never could see the harm in it ; but looked on it as a game 
where you played your stake, and lost or won it. She ceased 
to play, not because it was wrong, but it was expedient no 
more ; and Mr. Denis her son, was the cause of her giving up 
-this old trade. 

For me, I thankfully own that I was taught to see the matter 
in a graver light, not only by our Doctor’s sermons (two or 
three of which, on the text of Render unto Caesar,” he preached, 
to the rage of a great number of his congregation), but by many 
talks which he had with me ; when he showed me that 1 was Yn 
the wrong to break the laws of my country to which I owed 
obedience, as did every good citizen. He knew (though he 
nevet told me, and his reticence in this matter was surely very 
kind) that my poor father had died of w'ounds received in a 


/ ESCAPE PPOjU a CPE at DANGER. 


665 

smuggling encounter ; but he showed me how such a life must 
be loose^ lawless, secret, and wicked ; must bring a man amongst 
desperate companion^, and compel him to resist Caesar’s lawful 
authority by rebellion, and possibly murder. “ To thy mother 
I have used other arguments, Denny, my boy,” he said, very 
kindly. “ I and the Admiral want to make a gentleman of thee. 
Thy old grandfather isTich enough to help us if he chooses. I 
won't stop to inquire too strictly where all his money came 
from ; * but his clear we cannot make a gentleman of a smug- 
gler’s boy, who may be transported any day, or, in case of 

armed resistance, may be ” And here my good Doctor 

puts his hand to his ear, and indicates the punishment for 
piracy which was very common in my young time. My Denny 
does not want to ride with a crape over his face, and fire pistols 
at revenue officers ! No ! I pray you will ever show an honest 
countenance to the world. You will render unto Caesar the 
things which are Caesar’s, and — the rest, my child, you know.” 

Now, I remarked about this man, that when he approached 
a certain subject.^ an involuntary awe came over him, and he 
hushed as it were at the very idea of that sacred theme. It 
was very different with poor grandfather prating his sermons 
(and with some other pastors I have heard), who used this 
Name as familiarly as any other, and * * * but who am 

I to judge } and, my poor old grandfather, is there any need at 
this distance of time that I should be picking out the trabem in 
ociilo tuo? * * * # Howbeit, on that night, as I was 

walking home after drinking tea with my dear Doctor, I made 
a vow that I would strive henceforth to lead an honest life ; 
that my tongue should speak the truth, and my hand should be 
sullied by no secret crime. And as I spoke I saw my dearest 
little maiden’s light glimmering in her chamber, and the stars 
shining overhead, and felt — who could feel more bold and happy 
than I ? 

That walk schoolwards by West Street certainly was a detour. 
I might have gone a straighter road, but then 1 should not have 
seen a certain window : a little twinkling window in a gable of 
the Priory House, where the light used to be popped out at 
nine o’clock. T’other day, when we took over the King of 
France to Calais (his Royal Highness the Duke of Clarence 
being in command), I must needs hire a post-chaise from Dover, 
to look at that old window in the Priory House at Winchelsea. 
I went through the old tears, despairs, tragedies. I sighed as 
• sentimentally, after forty years, as though the infa?idi dolores 

* Eheu ! where a part of it went to. I shall have to say presently. D.D. 


664 


DENIS DUVAL. 


were fresh upon me, as though I were the schoolboy trudging 
back to his task, and taking a last look at his dearest joy. I 
used as a boy to try and pass that windoiv at nine, and I know 
a prayer was said for the inhabitant of yonder chamber. She 
knew my holidays, and my hours of going to school and return- 
ing thence. If my little maid hung certain signals in that 
window (such as a flower, for example^ to indicate all was well, 
a cross-curtain, and so forth), 1 diope she practised .no very 
unjustifiable stratagems. We agreed to consider that she was 
a prisoner in the hands of the enemy ; and we had few means of 
communication save these simple artifices, which are allowed to 
be fair in love and war. Monsieur de la Motte continued to 
live at our house, when his frequent affairs did not call him 
away thence ; but, as I said, few words passed between us after 
that angry altercation already described, and he and I were 
never friends again. 

He warned me that I had another enemy, and facts strangely 
confirmed the Chevalier’s warning. One Sunday night, as I 
was going to school, a repetition of the brickbat assault was 
made upon me, and this time the smart cocked hat which 
mother had given me came in for such a battering as effectually 
spoiled its modish shape. I told Dr. Barnard of this second 
attempt, and the good Doctor was not a little puzzled. He 
began to think that he was not so very wrong in espying a beam 
in Joseph Weston’s eye. We agreed to keep the matter quiet, 
however ; and a fortnight after, bn another Sunday evening, as 
I was going on my accustomed route to school, whom should I 
meet but the Doctor and Mr. Weston walking together ! A 
little way beyond the town gate there is a low wall round a field ; 
and Dr. Barnard, going by this field a quarter of au hour before 
my usual time for passing., found Mr. Joseph Weston walking 
there behind the stone enclosure ! 

“ Good-night, Denny,” says the Doctor, when he and his 
companion met me ; but surly Mr. Weston said nothing. 
“ Have you had any more brickbats at your head, my boy } ” 
the Rector continued. 

I said I was not afraid. I had got a good pistol, and a 
bullet in it this time. 

He shot that scoundrel on the same day you were sjiot, 
Mr. Weston,” sa\ s the Doctor. 

‘‘ Did he 1 ” growls the other. 

“ And your gun was loaded with the same-sized shot which 
Denis used to pepper his rascal,” continues the Doctor. “ I 
wonder if any of the crape went into the rascal’s wound ? 


7 ESCAPE FROM A GREA T DANGER, 665 

‘‘ Sir/’ said Mr. Weston, with an oath, “ what do you mean 
for to hint ? ” 

“The very oath the fellow used whom Denny hit when your 
brother and I travelled together. I am sorry to hear you use 
the language of such scoundrels, Mr. Weston.” 

“ If you dare to suspect me of anything unbecoming a gen- 
tleman, ril have the law of you, Mr. Parson, that I will ! ” roars 
the other. 

“ Denis, mon gar^on, tire ton pistolet de suite, et -vise moi 
bien cet homme Ik,” says the Doctor ; and griping hold of 
Weston’s arm, what does Dr. Barnard do but plunge his hand 
into Weston’s pocket, and draw thence another ! He said 
afterwards he saw the brass butt sticking out of Weston’s coat, 
as the two were walking together. 

“What !” shrieks Mr. Weston • “is that young miscreant 
to go about armed, and tell everybody he will murder me ; and 
aii\’t I for to defend myself ? I walk in fear of my life for 
him ! ” 

“You seem to me to be in the habit of travelling with pis- 
tols, Mr. Weston, and you know when people pass sometimes 
with money in their post-chaises.” 

“ You scoundrel, you — you boy ! I call you to witness the 
words this man have spoken. He have insulted me, and 
libelled me, and I’ll have the lor on him as sure as I am born ! ” 
shouts the angry man. 

“ Very good, Mr. Joseph Weston,” replied the other fiercely. 
“And I will ask Mr. Blades, the surgeon, to bring the shot 
which he took from your eye, and the scraps of crape adhering 
to your face, and we will go to lor a^ soon as you like ! ” 

Again I thought with a dreadful pang how Agnes was stay- 
ing in that man’s house, and how this quarrel would more than 
ever divide her from me ; for now she would not be allowed to 
visit the rectory — the dear neutral ground where I sometimes 
hoped to see her. 

Weston never went to law with the Doctor, as he threatened. 
Some awkward questions would have been raised, which he 
would have found a difficulty in answering : and though he 
averred that his accident took place on the day before our en- 
counter with the beau masque on Dartford Common, a little wit- 
ness on our side was ready to aver that Mr. Joe Weston left his 
house at the Priory before sunrise on the day when we took our 
journey to London, and that he returned the next morning with 
his eye bound up, when he sent for Mr. Blades, the surgeon of 
our town. Being awake, and looking from her window, my wit- 


666 


bENTS DUVAL. 


ness saw Weston mount his horse by the stable-lantern below, 
and heard him swear at the groom as he rode out at the ,gate. 
Curses used to drop naturally out of this nice gentleman’s lips ; 
and it is certain in his case that bad words and bad actions 
went together. 

The Westons were frequently absent from home, as was the 
Chevalier our lodger. My dear little Agnes was allowed to 
come and see us at these times ; or slipped out by the garden 
door, and ran to see her nurse Duval, as she always called my 
mother. I did not understand for a while that there was any 
prohibition on the Weston’s part to Agnes’ visiting us, or knovr 
that there was such mighty wrath harbored against me- in that 
house. 

I was glad, for the sake of a peaceable liffe at home, as for 
honesty’s sake too, that my mother did not oppose my determi- 
nation to take no share in that smuggling business in which our 
house still engaged. Any one who opposed mother in her own 
house had, I promise you, no easy time : but she saw that if she 
wished to make a gentleman of her boy, he must be no smug- 
gler’s apprentice; and when M. le Chevalier, being appealed 
to, shrugged his shoulders and said he washed his hands of me 
— “ Eh bien, M. de la Motte ! ” says she, “ we shall see if we 
can’t pass ourselves of you and your patronage. I imagine 
that people are not always the better for it.” “ No,” replied 
he, with a groan, and one of his gloomy looks, “ my friendship 
may do people harm, but my enmity is worse — entendez-vous } ” 
‘‘ Bah, bah ! ” says the stout old lady. ‘‘ Denisot has a good 
courage of his own. What do you say to me about enmity to a 
harmless boy, M. le Chevalier ? ” 

I have told how, on the night of the funeral of Madam de 
Saverne, Monsieur de la Motte sent me out to assemble his 
Mackerel men. Among these was the father of one of my 
town playfellows, by name Hookham, a seafaring man, who 
had met with an accident at his business — strained his back — 
and was incapable of work for a time. Hookham was an im- 
provident man: the rent got into arrears. My grandfather 
was his landlord, and I fear me, not the most humane credi- 
tor in the world. Now, when I returned home after my famous 
visit to London, my patron. Sir Peter Denis, gave me two 
guineas, and my lady made me a present of another. No doubt 
I should have spent this money had I received it sooner in 
London ; but in our little town of Winchelsea there was noth- 
ing to tempt me in the shops, except a fowling-piece at the 
pawnbroker’s, for whicii f had a great longing. But Mr, I'rh 


/ ESCAPE EROAf A GREA T DANGER. 


667 


boulet wanted four guineas for the gun, and I had but three, 
and would not go into debt. He would have given me the 
piece on credit, and frequently tempted me with it, but I re- 
sisted manfully, though I could not help hankering about the 
shop, and going again and again to look at the beautiful gun. 
The stock fitted my shoulder to a nicety. It was of the most 
beautiful workmanship. “ Why not take it now. Master Du- 
val?’’ Monsieur Triboulet said to me; “and pay me the re- 
maining guinea when you please. Ever so many gentlemen 
have been to look at it ; and I should be sorry now, indeed I 
should, to see such a beauty go out of the town.” As I was 
talking to Triboulet (it may have b( 



some one came in with a telescope 


with fifteen shillings. “ Don’t you know who that is ? ” says 
Triboulet (who was a chatterbox of a man). “That is John 
Hookham’s wife. It is but hard times with them since John’s 
accident. I have more of their goods here, and, efitre nous., 
John has a hard landlord, and quarter-day is just at hand.” I 
knew well enough that John’s landlord was hard, as he was my 
own grandfather. “ If I take my three pieces to Hookham,” 
thought I, “ he may find the rest of the rent.” And so he did ; 
and my three guineas went into my grandfather’s pocket out 
of mine ; and I suppose some one else bought the fowling- 
piece for which I had so longed. 

“ What, it is you who have given me this money, Master 
Denis ? ” says poor Hookham, who was sitting in his chair, 
groaning and haggard with his illness. “ I can’t take it — I 
ought not to take it.” 

“ Nay,” said I ; “ I should only have bought a toy with it, 
and if it comes to help you in distress, I can do without my 
plaything.” 

There was quite a chorus of benediction from the poor 
family in consequence of this act of good-nature ; and I dare 
say I went away from Hookham’s mightily pleased with myself 
and my own virtue. 

It appears I had not been gone long when Mr. Joe Weston 
came in to see the man, and when he heard that I had relieved 
him, broke out into a flood of abuse against me, cursed me for 
a scoundrel and impertinent jackanapes, who was always giving 
myself the airs of a gentleman, and flew out of the house in a 
passion. Mother heard of the transaction, too, and pinched 
my ear with a grim satisfaction. Grandfather said nothing, 
but pocketed my three guineas when Mrs. Hookham brought 
them ; and, though I did not brag about the matter much, 


668 


DENIS DUVAL. 


everything is known in a small town, and I got a great deal of 
credit for a very ordinary good action. 

And now, strangely enough, Hookham’s boy confirmed to 
me what the Slindon priests had hinted to good Dr. Barnard. 
“ Swear, says Tom (with that wonderful energy we used to 
have as boys) — “ Swear, Denis, ‘ So help you, strike you down 
dead ! ' you never will tell ! ’’ 

“ So help me, strike me down dead ! ’’ said I. 

“ Well, then, those — you know who — the gentlemen — want 
to do you some mischief.’’ 

“ What mischief can they do to an honest boy ? ” I asked. 

“ Oh, you don’t know what they are,” says Tom. “ If they 
mean a man harm, harm will happen to him. Father says no 
man ever comes to good who stands in Mr. Joe’s way. Where’s 
John Wheeler, of Rye, who had a quarrel with Mr, Joe? He’s 
in jail. Mr. Barnes, of Playden, had words with him at Hast- 
ings market : and Barnes’ ricks were burnt down before six 
months were over. How was Thomas Berry taken, after de- 
serting from the man-of-war? He is an awful man, Mr. Joe 
Weston is. Don’t get into his way. Father says so. But 
you are not to tell — no, never, that he spoke about it. Don’t 
go alone to Rye of nights, father says. Don’t go on any — and 
you know what not — any fishing business, except with those 
you know.” And so Tom leaves me with a finger to his lip 
and terror in his face. 

As for the fishmg, though I loved a sail dearly, my mind 
was made up by good Dr. Barnard’s advice to me. I would 
have no more night-fishing such as I had seen sometimes as a 
boy ; and when Rudge’s apprentice one night invited me, and 
called me a coward for refusing to go, I showed him I was no 
coward as far as fisticuffs went, and stood out a battle with him, 
in which I do believe I should have proved conqueror, though 
the fellow was four years my senior, had not his ally. Miss Sukey 
Rudge, joined him in the midst of our fight, and knocked me 
down with the kitchen bellows, when they both belabored me, 
as I lay kicking on the ground. Mr. Elder Rudge came in at 
the close of this dreadful combat, and his abandoned hussy of 
a daughter had the impudence to declare that the quarrel arose 
because I was rude to her — I, an innocent boy, who would as 
soon have made love to a negress as to that hideous, pock- 
marked, squinting, crooked, tipsy Sukey Rudge. I fall in love 
with Miss Squintum, indeed ! I knew a pair of eyes at home so 
bright, innocent, and pure, that I should have been ashamed 
to look in them had I been guilty of such a rascally treason. 



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/ ESCAPE FROM A GREA T DANGER. 669 

My little maid of Winchelsea heard of this battle, as she was 
daily hearing slanders against me from those worthy Mr. Wes- 
tons ; but she broke into a rage at the accusation, and said to 
the assembled gentlemen (as she told my good mother in after 
days), “ Denis Duval is not wieked. He is brave and he is 
good. And it is not true,^the story you tell against him. It is. 
a lie ! ’’ 

And now, once more it happeued that my little pistol helped 
to confound my enemies, and was to me, indeed, a gute We/ir 
und Waffen. I was for ever popping at marks with this little 
piece of artillery. I polished, oiled, and covered it with the 
utmost care, and kept it in my little room in a box of which I 
had the key. One day, by a most fortunate chance, 1 took my 
school-fellow, Tom Parrot, who became a great crony of mine, 
into the room. We went up stairs, by the private door of 
Rudge’s house, and not through the shop, where Mademoiselle 
Figs and Monsieur the apprentice were serving their pustomers ; 
and arrived in my room, we boys opened my box, examined the 
precious pistol, screw, barrel, flints, powder-horn, &c., locked 
the box, and went away to school, promising ourselves a good 
afternoon’s sport on that half-holiday. Lessons over, I returned 
home to dinner, to find black lodks from all the inmates of the 
house where I lived, from the grocer, his daughter, his appren- 
tice, and even the little errand-boy who blacked the boots and 
swept the shop stared at me impertinently, and said, “ Oh, 
Denis, ain’t you going to catch it ! ” 

Wliat is the matter ? ” I asked, very haughtily. 

“ Oh, my lord ! we’ll soon show your lordship what is the 
matter.” (This was a silly nickname I had in the town and at 
school, where I believe, I gave myself -not a few airs since I 
had worn my fine few clothes, and paid my visit to London.) 
‘‘This accounts for his laced waistcoat, and his guineas which 
he flings about. Does your lordship know these here shillings, 
and this half-crown ? Look at them, Mr. Beales ! See the^ 
marks *on them whicl^I scratched with my own hand before I 
put them into the till from which my lord took ’em.” 

Shillings ? — till ? What did they mean ? ” How dare you 

ask, you little hypocrite ! ” screams out Miss Rudge. “ I 
marked them shillings and that half-crown with my own needle, 

I did ; and of that 1 can take my Bible oath.” 

“ Well, and what then } ” I asked, remembering how this 
young woman had not scrupled to bear false witness in another 
charge against me. 

“ What then ? They were in the till this morning, young 


DENTS DUVAL. 


670 

fellow ; and you know well enough where they were found 
afterwards,’* says Mr. Beales. “ Come, come ! This is a bad 
job. This is a sessions job, my lad.” 

“ But where were they found } ” again I asked. 

“ We’ll tell you that before Squire Boroughs and the magis- 
trates, you young vagabond ! ” ^ 

“ You little viper, that have turned and stung me ! ” 

‘‘ You precious young scoundrel ! ” 

‘‘You wicked little story-telling, good-for-nothing little 
thief, ” cry Rudge, the apprentice, and Miss Rudge in a breath. 
And I stood bewildered by their outcry, and, indeed, not quite 
comprehending the charge which they made against me. 

“The magistrates are sitting at Town Hall now. We will 
take the little villain at once,” says the grocer. “ You bring 
the box along with you, constable. Lord ! Lord ! what will his 
poor grandfather say ? ” And, wondering still at the charge 
made against me, I was made to walk through the streets to the 
Town Hall, passing on the way by at least a score of our boys, 
who were enjoying their half-holiday. It was market-day, too, 
and the town full. It is forty years ago, but I dream about that 
dreadful day still ; and, an old gentleman of sixty, fancy myself 
walking through Rye market, with Mr. Beales’ fist clutching 
my collar ! 

A number of our boys joined this dismal procession, and 
accompanied me into the magistrates’ room. “ Denis Duval 
up for stealing money ! ” cries one. “ This accounts for his fine 
clothes,” sneers another. “ He’ll be hung,” says a third. The 
market people stare, and crowd round, and jeer. I feel as if 
in a horrible nightmare. We pass under the pillars of the 
Market House, up the steps to the Town Hail, where the 
magistrates were, who chose market-day for their sittings. 

How my heart throbbed, as L saw my dear Dr. Barnard 
seated among them. 

• “ Oh, Doctor,” cries poor Denis, clasping his hands, ^^you 

don’t believe me guilty .^ ” % 

“ Guilty of what ? ” cries the Doctor, from the raised table 
round which the gentlemen sat. 

“ Guilty of stealing.” 

“ Guilty of robbing my till.” 

“ Guilty of taking two half-crowns, three shillings and two- 
pence in copper, all marked,” shriek out Rudge, the apprentice, 
and Miss Rudge in a breath. 

“ Denny Duval steal sixpences ! ” cries the Doctor ; “ I 
would as soon believe he stole the dragon off the churcL 
steeple ! ” 


I ESCAPE FROM A GREA T DANGER. 67 1 

Silence, you boys ! Silence in the court, there ; or flog 
^em and turn ’em all out,” says the magistrates’ clerk. Some 
of our boys — friends of mine — who had crowded into the place, 
were hurraying at my kind Doctor Barnard’s speech. 

“It is a most serious charge,” says the clerk. 

“ But what is the charge, my good Mr. Hickson ? You 
might as well put me into the dock as that ” 

“ Pray, sir, will you allow the business of the court to go 
on ? ” asks the clerk, testily. “ Make your statement, Mr. 
Rudge, and don’t be afraid of anybody. You are under the 
protection of the court, sir.” 

And now for the first time I heard the particulars of the 
charge made against me. Rudge, and his daughter after him, 
slated (on oath, I am shocked to say) that for some time past 
they had missed money from the till ; small sums of money, in 
shillings and half crowns, they could not say how much. It 
might be two pounds, three pounds, in all; but the money was 
constantly going. At last. Miss Rudge said she was determined 
to mark some money, and did so ; and that money was found in 
that box which belonged to Denis Duval, and which the con- 
stable brought into court. 

“ Oh, gentlemen ! ” I cried out in agony, “ it’s a wicked, 
wicked lie, and it’s not the first she has told about me. A 
week ago she said I wanted to kiss her, and she and Bevil both 
set on me ; and I never wanted to kiss the nasty thing, so help 
me ” 

“ Y ou did, you lying wicked boy ! ” cries Miss Sukey. “ And 
Edward Bevil came to my rescue ; and you struck me, like a 
low mean coward ; and we beat him well, and served him right, 
the little abandoned boy.” 

“ And he kicked one of my teeth out — you did, you little 
villain ! ” roars Bevil, whose jaws had indeed suffered in that 
scuffle in the kitchen, when his precious sweetheart came to his 
aid with the bellows. 

“ He called me a coward, and I fought him fair, though he 
is ever so much older than me,” whimpers out the prisoner. 
“ And Sukey Rudge set upon me, and beat me too ; and if I 
kicked him, he kicked me.” 

“And since this kicking match they have found out that 
you stole their money, have they ? ” says the Doctor, and turns 
round, appealing to his brother magistrates. 

“ Miss Rudge, please to tell the rest of your story ? ” calls 
out the justices’ clerk. 

The rest of the Rudges’ story was, that having their suspi- 


DENIS DC/EAI. 


cions roused against me, they determined to examine my cup- 
boards and boxes in my absence, to see whether the stolen 
objects were to be found, and in my box they discovered the 
two marked half-crowns, the three marked shillings, a brass- 
barrelled pistol, which were now in court. “ Me and Mr. Bevil, 
the apprentice, found the money in the box ; and we called my 
papa from the shop, and we fetched Mr. Beales, the constable, 
w^ho lives over the way ; and when the little monster came back 
from school, we seized upon him, and brought him before your* 
worships, and hanging is what I said he would always come 
to,” shrieks my enemy Miss Rudge. 

‘‘ Why, I have the key of that box in my pocket now ! ” 1 
cried out. 

We had means of opening it,” says Miss Rudge, looking 
very red. 

“ Oh, if you have another key — ,” interposes the Doctor. 

We broke it open with the tongs and poker,” says Miss 
Rudge, “ me and Edward did — I mean Mr. Bevii, the appren- 
tice.” ' 

“ When } ” said I, in a great tremor. 

“ When } When you was at school, you little miscreant ! 
Half an hour before you came back to dinner.” 

Tom Parrot, Tom Parrot ! ” I cried. “ Call Tom Par- 
rot, gentlemen. For goodness’ sake call Tom ! ” I said, my 
heart beating so that I could hardly speak. 

“ Here I am, Denny ! ” pipes Tom in the crowd ; and pres- 
ently he comes up to their honors*on the bench. 

“ Speak to Tom, Doctor, dear Doctor Barnard ! ” I con- 
tinued. “Tom, when did I show you my pistol.^” 

“ Just before ten o’clock school.” 

“What did I do?” 

“ You unlocked your box, took the pistol out of a handker- 
chief, showed it to me, and two flints, a powder-horn, a bullet- 
mould, and some bullets, and put them back again, and locked 
the box.” 

“ Was there any money in the box ? ” 

“There was nothing in the box but the pistol, and the bul- 
lets and things. I looked into it. It was as empty as my 
hand.” 

“ And Denis Duval has been sitting by you in school ever 
since ? ” 

“ Ever since — except when I was called up and caned for 
my Corderius,” says Tom, with a roguish look; and there was 
a great laughter and shout of applause from our boys of Po- 


THE LAST OF MY SCHOOL-DA YS. 673 

cock^s when this testimony was given in their schoolfellow’s 
favor. 

My kind Doctor held his hand over the railing to me, and 
when I took it, my heart was so full that my eyes overflowed. 
I thought of little Agnes. What would she have felt if her 
Denis had been committed as a thief I had such a rapture 
of thanks and gratitude that I think the pleasure of the acquit- 
tal was more than equivalent to the anguish of the accusation. 
What a shout all Pocock’s boys set up, as 1 wer\J; out of the 
justice-room ! We trooped pyfully down the stairs, and there 
were fresh shouts and huzzays as we got down to the market. 
I saw Mr. Joe Weston buying corn at a stall. He only looked 
at me once. His grinding teeth and his clenched riding-whip 
did not frighten me in the least. 


CHAPTER VII. ' 

THE LAST OF MY SCHOOL-DAYS. 

As our joyful procession of boys passed by Partlett’s the 
pastry-cook’s, one of the boys — Samuel Arbin — I remember 
the fellow well — a greedy boy, with a large beard and whiskers, 
though only fifteen years old — insisted that I ought to stand 
treat in consequence of my victory over my enemies. As far 
as a groat went, I said I was ready : for that was all the money 
I had. 

“ Oh, you story-teller ! ” cries the other. What have you 
done with your three guineas which you were bragging about 
and showing to the boys at school ? I suppose they were in 
the box when it was broken open.” This Samuel Arbin was 
one of the boys who had jeered when I was taken in charge 
by the constable, and would have liked me to be guilty, I al- 
most think. I am afraid I had bragged about my money when 
I possessed it, and may have shown my shining gold pieces to 
some of the boys in school. 

“ I know what he has done with his money ! ” broke in my 
steadfast crony Tom Parrot. ‘‘ He has given away every shil- 
ling of it to a poor family who wanted it, and nobody ever 
you give away a shilling, Samuel Arbin,” he says. 

Unless he could get eighteenpence by it ! ” sang out an- 
other little voice. 


43 


DENIS DUVAL, 


674 

‘‘ Tom Parrot, I’ll break every bone in your body, as sure 
as my name is Arbin ! ” cried the other, in a fury. 

‘‘ Sam Arbin,” said I, “ after you have finished Tom, you 
must try me ; or we’ll do it now, if you like.” To say the 
truth, I had long had an inclination to try my hand against 
Arbin. He was an ill friend to me, and amongst the younger 
boys a bully and a usurer to boot. The rest called out, “ A 
ring ! a ring ! Let us go on the green and have it out ! ” be- 
ing in their innocent years always ready for a fight. 

But this one was never to come off : and (except in later 
days, when I went to revisit the old place, and ask for a half- 
holiday for my young successors at Pocock’s) I was never again 
to see the ancient schoolroom. While we boys v/ere brawling 
in the market-place before the pastry-cook’s door. Dr. Barnard 
came up, and our quarrel was hushed in a moment. 

What ! fighting and quarrelling already ? ” says the Doc- 
tor, sternly. 

It wasn’t Denny’s fault, sir ! ” cried out several of the 
boys. ‘‘ It was Arbin began.” And, indeed, I can say for 
myself that in all the quarrels I have had in life — and they 
have not been few — I consider I always have been in the 
right. 

“ Come along with me, Denny,” says the Doctor, taking me 
by the shoulder : and he led me away and we took a walk in 
the town together, and as we passed old Ypres Tower, which 
was built by King Stephen, they say, and was a fort in old 
days, but is used as the town-pfison now, “ Suppose you had 
been looking from behind those bars now, Denny, and awaiting 
your trial at assizes ? Yours would not have been a pleasant 
plight,” Dr. Barnard said. 

But I was innocent, sir ! You know I was ! ” 

“Yes. Praise be where praise is due. But if you had not 
providentially been able to prove your innocence — if you and 
your friend Parrot had not happened to inspect your box, you 
would have been in yonder place. Ha ! there is the bell ring- 
ing for afternoon service, which my good friend Dr. Wing 
keeps up. What say you } Shall we go and — and — offer up 
our thanks, Denny — for the — the immense peril from which — ■ 
you have been — delivered } ” 

I remember how my dear friend’s voice trembled as he 
spoke, and two or three drops fell from his kind eyes on my 
hand, which he held. I followed him into the church. Indeed 
and indeed I was thankful for my deliverance from a great 
danger, and even more thankful to have the regard of the true 


THE LAST OF MY SCHOOL-DA YS. 675 

gentleman, the wise and tender friend, who was there to guide, 
and cheer, and help me. 

As we read the last psalm appointed for that evening ser- 
vice, I remember how the good man, bowing his own head, put 
his hand upon mine ; and we recited together the psalm of 
thanks to the Highest, who had had respect unto the lowly, 
and who had stretched forth His hand upon the furiousness of 
my enemies, and whose right hand had saved me. 

Dr. Wing recognized and greeted his comrade when service 
was over : and the one doctor presented me to the other, who 
had been one of the magistrates on the bench at the time of 
my trial. Dr. Wing asked us into his house, where dinner ^was 
served at four o’clock, and of course the transactions of the 
morning were again discussed. What could be the reason of 
the persecution against me 1 Who instigated it ? There were 
matters connected with this story regarding which I could not 
speak. Should I do so, I must betray secrets which were not 
mine, and which implicated I knew not whom, and regarding 
which I must hold my peace. Now, they are secrets no more. 
That old society of smugglers is dissolved long ago : nay, I 
shall have to tell presently how I helped myself to break it 
up. Grandfather, Rudge, the Chevalier, the gentlemen of the 
Priory, were all connected in that great smuggling society of 
which I have spoken ; which had its depots all along the coast 
and inland, and its correspondents from Dunkirk to Havre de 
Grace. I have said as a boy how I had been on some of these 
fishing ” expeditions ; and how, mainly by the effect of my 
dear Doctor’s advice, I had withdrawn from all participation 
in this lawless and wicked life. When Bevil called me coward 
for refusing to take a share in a night-cruise, a quarrel ensued 
between us, ending in that battle royal which left us all sprawl- 
ing, and cuffing and kicking each other on the kitchen floor. 
Was it rage at the injury to her sweetheart’s teeth, or hatred 
against myself, which induced' my sweet Miss Sukey to propa- 
gate calumnies against me ? The provocation I had given cer- 
tainly did not seem to warrant such a deadly enmity as a pros- 
ecution and a perjury showed must exist. Howbeit, there was 
a reason for the anger of the grocer’s daughter and apprentice. 
They would injure me in any way they could ; and (as in the 
before-mentioned case of the bellows) take the first weapon at 
hand to overthrow me. 

As magistrates of the county, and knowing a great deal of 
what was happening round about them, and the character of 
their parishioners and neighbors, the two gentlemen could not, 


DENIS DUVAL, 


676 

then, press me too closely. Smuggled silk and lace, rum and 
brandy? '^Who had not these in his possession along the Sus^ 
sex and Kent coast ? “ And, Wing, will you promise me there 

are no ribbons in your house but such as have paid duty ? 
asks one Doctor of the other. 

“ My good friend, it is lucky my wife has gone to her tea- 
table,’’ replies Dr. Wing, “ or I would not answer for the peace 
being kept.” 

“ My dear Wing,” continues Dr. Barnard, “ this brandy, 
punch is excellent, and is worthy of being smuggled. To run 
an anker of brandy seems no monstrous crime ; but when men 
engage in these lawless ventures at all, who knows how far the 
evil will go ? 1 buy ten kegs of brandy from a French fishing- 
boat, I land it under a lie on the coast, I send it inland ever so 
far, be it from here to York, and all my consignees lie and 
swindle. I land it, and lie to the revenue officer. Under a lie 
(that is, a mutual secrecy,) I sell it to the landlord of ‘ The 
Bell ’ at Maidstone, say — where a good friend of ours, Denny, 
looked at his pistols. You remember the day when his brother 
received the charge of shot in his face ? My landlord sells it 
to a customer under a lie. We are all engaged in crime, con- 
spiracy, and falsehood ; nay, if the revenue looks too closely 
after us, we out with our pistols, and to crime and conspiracy 
add murder. Do you suppose men engaged in lying every 
day will scruple about a false oath in a witness-box ? Crime 
engenders crime, sir. Round about us^ Wing, I know there 
exists a vast confederacy of fraud, greed, and rebellion. I 
name no names, sir. I fear men high placed in the world’s 
esteem, and largely endowed with its riches too, are concerned 
in the -pursuit of this godless traffic of smuggling, and to what 
does it not lead them ? To falsehood, to wickedness, to murder, 
to ” 

‘‘ Tea, sir, if you please, sir,” says John, entering. “ My 
mistress and the young ladies are waiting.” 

The ladies had previously heard the story of poor Denis 
Duval’s persecution and innocence, and had shown him great 
kindness. By the time when we joined them after dinner, they 
had had time to perform a new toilette, being engaged to cards 
with some neighbors. I knew Mrs. Wing was a customer to 
my mother for some of her French goods, and she would 
scarcely, on an ordinary occasion, have- admitted such a lowly 
guest to her table as the humble dressmaker’s boy ; but she 
and the ladies were very kind, and my persecution and proved 
innocence had interested them in my favor. 


THE LAST OF MY SCHOOL-DA YS, 677 

“ You have had a long sitting, gentlemen,’’ says Mrs. Wing : 
“ I suppose you have been deep in politics, and the quarrel with 
France.” 

‘‘We have been speaking of France and French goods, my 
dear,” said Dr. Wing, dryly. 

“ And of the awful crime of smuggling and encouraging 
smuggling, my dear Mrs. Wing ! ” cries my Doctor. 

“ Indeed, Dr. Barnard ! ” Now, Mrs. Wing and the young 
ladies were dressed in smart new caps, and ribbons, which my 
poor mother supplied ; and they turned red, and I turned as red 
as the cap-ribbons, as I thought how my good ladies had been 
provided. No wonder Mrs. Wing was desirous to change the 
subject of conversation. 

“ What is this young man to do after his persecution ? ” she 
asked. “ He can’t go back to Mr. Rudge — that horrid Wes- 
leyan w’ho has accused him of stealing.” 

No, indeed, I could not go back. We had not thought 
about the matter until then. There had been a hundred things 
to agitate and interest me in the half dozen hours since my ap- 
prehension and dismissal. 

The Doctor would take me to Winchelsea in his chaise. I 
could not go back to my persecutors, that was clear, except to 
reclaim my little property and my poor little boxes, which they 
had found means to open. Mrs. Wing gave me a hand, the 
young ladies a stately curtsey ; and my good Dr. Barnard put- 
ting a hand under the arm of, the barber’s grandson, we quitted 
these kind people. I was not on the quarter-deck as”yet, you 
see. I was but a humble lad belonging to ordinary tradesmen. 

By the way, I had forgotten to say that the two clergymen, 
during their after-dinner talk, had employed a part of it in 
examining me as to my little store of learning at school, and my 
future prospects. Of Latin I had a smattering ; French, owing 
to my birth, and mainly to M. de la Motte’s instruction and 
conversation, I could speak better than either of my two 
examiners, and with quite the good manner and conversation. 
I was well advanced, too, in arithmetic and geometry ; and 
Dampier’s Voyages were as much my delight as those of Sinbad 
or my friends Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday. I could pass 
a good examination in navigation and seamanship, and could 
give an account of the different sailings, working-tides, double- 
altitudes, and so forth. 

“ And you can manage a boat at sea, too ? ” says Dr. 
Barnard, dryly. I blushed, I suppose. I could do that, and 
could steer, reef, and pull an oar. At least 1 could do so two 
years ago. 


DENIS DUVAL, 


678 


“ Denny, my boy,’^ says my good Doctor, “ I think ’tis time 
for thee to leave this school at any rate, and that our friend Sir 
Peter must provide for thee/' 

However he may desire to improve in learning, no boy, I 
fancy, is very sorry when a proposal is made to him to leave 
school. I said that I should be too glad if Sir Peter, my patron, 
would provide for me. With the education I had, I ought to 
get on, the Doctor said, and my grandfather he was sure would 
find the means for allowing me to appear like a gentleman. 

To fit a boy for appearance on the quarter-deck, and to 
enable him to rank with others, I had heard would cost thirty 
or forty pounds a year at least. I asked, Did Dr. Barnard 
think my grandfather could afford such a sum ? 

“ I know not your grandfather’s means,” Dr. Barnard 
answered, smiling. “ He keeps his own counsel. But I am 
very much mistaken, Denny, if he cannot afford to make you 
a better allowance than many a fine gentleman can give his son. 
I believe him to be rich. Mind, I have no precise reason for 
my belief ; but I fancy. Master Denis, your good grandpapa’s 
fishing has been very profitable to him.” 

How rich was he 1 1 began to think of the treasures in my 

favorite “ Arabian Nights.” Did Dr. Barnard think grandfather 
was very rich ? Well — the Doctor could not tell. The notion 
in Winchelsea was that old Mr. Peter was very well to do. At 
any rate I must go back to him. It was impossible that I should 
stay with the Rudge family after the insulting treatment I had 
had from them. The Doctor said he would take me home with 
him in his chaise, if I would pack my little trunks ; and with 
this talk we reached Rudge’s shop, which I entered not without 
a beating heart. There was Rudge glaring at me from behind 
his desk, where he was posting his books. The apprentice 
looked daggers at me as he came up through a trap-door from 
the cellar with a string of dip-candles ; and my charming Miss 
Susan was behind the counter tossing up her ugly head. 

‘‘ Ho ! he’s come back, have he ? ” says Miss Rudge. 

As all the cupboards is locked in the parlor, you can go in, 
and get your tea there, young man.” 

“ I am going to take Denis home, Mr. Rudge,” said my 
kind Doctor. “ He cannot remain with you, after the charge 
which you made against him this morning.” 

“ Of having our marked money in his box ? Do you go for 
to dare for to say we put it there ? ” cries Miss, glaring now at 
me, now at Dr. Barnard. ‘‘ Go to say that 1 Please to say that 
once. Dr. Barnard, before Mrs. Baker and Mrs. Scales ” (these 


THE LAST OF MY SCHOOL-DA K?. 


679 

were two women who happened to be in the shop purchasing 
goods.) Just be so good for to say before these ladies, that 
we have put the money in that boy’s box, and we’ll see whether 
there is not justice in Hengland for a poor girl whom you insult, 
because you are a doctor and a magistrate indeed ! Eh, if I 
was a man, I wouldn’t let some people’s gowns, and cassocks, 
and bands, remain long, on their backs — that I wouldn’t. And 
some people wouldn’t see a woman insulted if they wasn’t 
cowards ! ” As she said this. Miss Sukey looked at the cellar- 
trap, above which the apprentice’s head had appeared, but the 
Doctor turned also towards it with a glance so threatening, that 
Bevil let the trap fall suddenly down, not a little to my Doctor’s 
amusement. 

Go and pack thy trunk, Denny. I will come back for thee 
in half an hour. Mr. Rudge must see that after being so in- 
-suited as you have been, you never as a gentleman can stay in 
this house.” 

‘‘ A pretty gentleman, indeed ! ” ejaculates Miss Rudge. 
Pray how long since was barbers gentlemen, I should like to 
know ? Mrs. Scales mum, Mrs. Barker mum, — did you ever 
have your hair dressed by a gentleman ? If you want for to 
have it, you must go to Mounseer Duval, at Winchelsea, which 
one of the name was hung, Mrs. Barker mum, for a thief and a 
robber, and he won’t be the last neither ! ” 

■ There was no use in bandying abuse with this woman. I 
will go and get my trunk, and be ready, sir,” I said to the Doc- 
tor ; but his back was no sooner turned than the raging virago 
opposite me burst out with a fury of words, that I certainly can’t 
remember after five-and-forty years. I fancy I see now the 
little green eyes gleaming hatred at me, the lean arms akimbo, 
the feet stamping as she hisses out every imaginable impreca- 
tion at my poor head. 

Will no man help me, and stand by and see that barber’s 
boy insult me ? ” she cried, “ Bevil, I say — Bevil ! ’Elp me ! ” 
I ran up stairs to my little room, and was not twenty minutes 
in making up my paqkages. I had passed years in that little 
room, and soniehow grieved to leave it. The odious people had 
injured me, and yet I would have liked to part friends with 
them. I had passed delightful nights there in the company of 
Robinson Crusoe, Mariner, and Monsieur Galland and his 
Contes Arabes, and Hector of Troy, whose adventures and 
lamentable death (out of Mr. Pope) I could recite by heart ; 
and I had had weary nights, too, with my school-books, cram- 
ming that crabbed Latin grammar into my puzzled brain. With 


68o 


DENIS DUVAL. 


arithmetic, logarithms, and mathematics I have said I was more 
familiar. I took a pretty good place in our school with them, 
and ranked before many boys of greater age. 

And now my boxes being packed (my little library being 
stowed away in that which contained my famous pistol), I 
brought them down stairs, with nobody to help me, and had 
them ill the passage ready against Dr. Barnard’s arrival. The 
passage is behind the back shop at Rudge’s — (dear me ! how 
well I remember it !) — and a door thence leads into a side 
street. On the other side of this passage is the kitchen, where 
had been the light which has been described already, and where 
we commonly took our meals. 

I declare I went into that kitchen disposed to part friends 
with all these people — to forgive Miss Sukey her lies, and Bevil 
his cuffs, and all the past quarrels between us. Old Rudge 
was by the fire, having his supper ; Miss Sukey opposite to him. * 
Bevil, as yet, was minding the shop. 

“ I am come to shake hands before going away,” I said. 

‘‘You’re a going, are you ? And pray, sir,- wherehever are 
you a going of ? ” says Miss Sukey, over her tea. 

“ I am going home with Dr. Barnard. I can’t stop in this 
house after you have accused me of stealing your money.” 

“ Stealing ! Wasn’t the money in your box, you little beastly 
thief ? ” 

“ Oh, you young reprobate, I am surprised the bears don’t 
come in and eat you,” groans old Rudge. “You have short- 
ened my life with your wickedness, that you have ; and if you 
don’t bring your good grandfather’s gray hairs with sorrow to the 
grave, I shall be surprised, that I shall. You, who come of a 
pious family — I tremble when I think of you, Denis Duval 1 ” 

“ Tremble ! Faugh ! the wicked little beast ! he makes me 
sick, he do ! ” cries Miss Sukey, with looks of genuine loathing. 

“ Let him depart from among us ! ” cries Rudge. 

“ Never do I wish to see his ugly face again ! ” exclaims 
the gentle Susan. 

“ I am going as soon as Dr. Barnard’s chaise comes,” I 
said. “ My boxes are in the passage now, ready packed.” 

“ Ready packed, are they ? Is there any more of our money 
in them, you little miscreant.^ Pa, is your silver tankard in the 
cupboard, and is the spoons safe ? ” 

I think poor Sukey had been drinking to drive away the 
mortifications of the morning in the court-house. She became 
more excited and violent with every word she spoke, and 
shrieked and clenched her fists at me like a madwoman. 


THE LAST OF MY SCHOOL-DA VS. 68 1 

Susanna, you have had false witness bore against you, my 
child ; and you are not the first of your name. But be calm, be 
calm ; it’s our duty to be calm ! ” 

Eh ! ” (here she gives a grunt.) ‘‘ Calm with that sneak — 
that pig — that liar — that beast ! Where’s Edward Bevil ? Why 
don’t he come forward like a man, and flog the young scoundrel’s 
life out } ” shrieks Susanna. Oh, with this here horsewhip, 
how I would like to give it you ! ” (She clutched her father’s 
whip from the dresser, where it commonly hung on two hooks.) 
“ Oh, you — you villain ! you have got your pistol, have you ? 
Shoot me, you little coward, I ain’t afraid of you ! You have 
your pistol in your box, have you ! ” (I uselessly said as much 
in reply to this taunt.) “ Stop ! I say. Pa, — that young thief 
isn’t going away with them boxes, and robbing the whole house 
as he may. Open the boxes this instant ! We’ll see he’s stole 
nothing ! Open them, 1 say ! ” 

I said I would do nothing of the kind. My blood was boil- 
ing up at this brutal behavior ; and as she dashed out of the 
room to seize one of my boxes, I put myself before her, and sat 
down on it. 

This was assuredly a bad position to take, for the furious 
vixen began to strike me and lash at my face with the riding- 
whip, and it was more than I could do to wrench it from her. 

Of course, at this act of defence on my part. Miss Sukey 
yelled for help, and called out, “ Edward ! Ned Bevil ! The 
coward is a striking me ! Help, Ned ! ” At this, the shop door 
flies open, and Sukey’s champion is about to rush on me, but he 
breaks down over my other box with a crash of his shins, and 
frightful execrations. His nose is prone on the pavement ; 
Miss Sukey is wildly laying about her with her horsewhip (and 
I think Bevil’s jacket came in for most of the blows) ; we are 
all higgledy-piggledy^ plunging and scuffling in the dark — when 
a carriage drives up, which I had not heard in the noise of 
action, and as the hall door opened, I was pleased to think that 
Dr. Barnard had arrived, according to his promise. 

It was not the Doctor. The new-comer wore a gown, but 
not a cassock. Soon after my trial before the magistrates was 
over, our neighbor, John Jephson,Y)f Winchelsea, mounted his 
cart and rode home from Rye market. He straightway went to 
our house, and told my mother of the strange scene which had 
just occurred, and of my accusation before the magistrates and 
acquittal. She begged, she ordered Jephson to lend her his 
cart. She seized whip and reins ; she drove over to Rye ; and 
I don’t envy Jephson’s old gray mare that journey with such a 


682 


DENIS DUVAL. 


charioteer behind her. The door, opening from the street, 
flung light into the passage ; and behold, we three warriors 
were sprawling on the floor in the higgledy-piggledy stage of the 
battle as my mother entered ! 

What a scene for a mother with a strong arm, a warm heart, 
and a high tempej ! Madame Duval rushed instantly at Miss 
Susan, and tore her shrieking from my body, which fair Susan 
was pummelling with the whip. A part of Susan’s cap and tufts 
of her red hair were torn off by this maternal Amazon, and 
Susan was hurled through the open door into the kitchen, where 
she fell before her frightened father. I don’t know how many 
blows my parent inflicted upon this creature. Mother might 
have slain her, but that the chaste Susanna, screaming shrilly, 
rolled under the deal kitchen table. 

Madame Duval had wrenched away from this young person 
the horsewhip with which Susan had been operating upon the 
shoulders of her only son, and snatched the weapon as her 
fallen foe dropped. And now my mamma, seeing old Mr. 
Rudge sitting in a ghastly state of terror in the corner, rushed 
at the grocer, and in one minute, with butt and thong, inflicted 
a score of lashes over his face, nose, and eyes, for which any- 
body who chooses may pity him. “ Ah, you will call my boy a 
thief, will you ? Ah, you will take my Denny before the 
justices, will you } Prends moi 9a, gredin ! Attrape, lache ! 
Nimmt noch ein paar Schlage, Spitzbube ! ” cries out mother, in 
that polyglot language of English, French, High-Dutch, which 
she always used when excited. My good mother could shave 
and dress gentlemen’s heads as well as any man ; and faith I 
am certain that no man in all Europe got a better dressing than 
Mr. Rudge on that evening. 

Bless me ! I have written near a page to describe a battle 
which could not have lasted five minutes. Mother’s cart was 
drawn up at the side street whilst she was victoriously epgaged 
within. Meanwhile Dr. Barnard’s chaise had come to the front 
door of the shop, and he strode through it, and found us con- 
querors in possession of both fields. Since my last battle with 
Bevil, we both knew that I was more than a match for him. 
“ In the king’s name, I charge you drop your daggers,” as the 
man says in the play. Our wars were over on the appearance 
of the man of peace. Mother left off plying the horsewhip over 
Rudge ; Miss Sukey came out from under the table ; Mr. Bevil 
rose, and slunk off to wash his bleeding face ; and when the 
wretched Rudge whimpered out that he would have the law for 
this assault, the Doctor sternly said, ‘‘You were three to one 


THE EAST OF MY SCHOOL-DA YS, 683 

during part of the battle, three to two afterwards, and after your 
testimony to-day, you perjured old miscreant, do you suppose 
any magistrate will believe you ? 

No. Nobody did believe them. A punishment fell on 
these bad people. I don’t know who gave them the name, 
but Rudge and his daughter were called Ananias and Sap- 
phira in Rye ; and from that day the old man’s affairs seemed 
to turn to the bad. When our boys of Pocock’s met the gro- 
cer, his daughter, or his apprentice, the little miscreants would 
cry out, Who put the money in Denny’s box ? ” “ Who bore 

false witness against his neighbor t “ Kiss the book, Sukey 
my dear, and tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but 
the truth, do you hear.^ ” They had a dreadful life, that poor 
grocer’s family! As for that rogue Tom Parrot, he comes into 
the shop one market-day when the place was full, and asksvfor a 
penn’orth of sugar-candy, in payment for which he offers a 
penny to old Rudge sitting at his books behind his high desk. 
“ It’s a good bit of money,” says Tom (as bold as the brass 
which he was tendering). “ It ain’t marked^ Mr. Rudge, like 
Denny Duval’s money ! ” And, no doubt, at a signal from the 
young reprobate, a chorus of boys posted outside began to sing, 
“ Ananias, Ananias ! He pretends to be so pious ! Ananias 

and Saphia ” Well, well, the Saphia of these young wags 

was made to rhyme incorrectly with a word beginning with L. 
Nor was this the only punishment which befell the unhappy 
Rudge : Mrs. Wing and several of his chief patrons took away 
their custom from him and dealt henceforth with the opposi- 
tion grocer. Not long after my affair. Miss Sukey married the 
toothless apprentice, who got a bad bargain with her, a sweetheart 
or wife. I shall have to tell presently what a penalty they 
(and some others) had to pay for their wickedness ; and of an 
act of contrition on poor Miss Sukey’s part, whom, I am sure, 
I heartily forgive. Then was cleared up that mystery (which I 
could not understand, that Dr. Barnard could not, or would 
not) of the persecutions directed against a humble lad, who 
never, except in self-defence, did harm to any mortal. 

I shouldered the trunks, causes of the late lamentable war, 
and put them into mother’s cart, into which I was about to 
mount, but the shrewd old lady would not let me take a place 
beside her. “ I can drive well enough. Go thou in the chaise 
with the Doctor. He can talk to thee better my son, than an 
ignorant woman like me. Neighbor Johnson told me how the 
good gentleman, stood by thee in the justice-court. If ever 
I or mine can do anything to repay him, he may command met 


DENIS DUVAL. 


I 

684 

Houp, Schimmel ! Fort ! Shalt soon be to house ! ” And 
with this she was off with my bag and baggage, as the night 
was beginning to fall. 

I went out of the Rudges^ house, into which I have never 
since set foot. I took my place in the chaise by my kind Dr. 
Barnard. We passed through Winchelsea gate, and dipped 
down into the marshy plain beyond, with bright glimpses of the 
Channel shining beside us, and the stars glittering overhead. 
We talked of the affair of the day, of course — the affair most 
interesting, that is, to me, who could think of nothing but ma- 
gistrates, and committals, and acquittals. The Doctor repeated 
his firm conviction that there was a great smuggling conspiracy 
all along the coast and neighborhood. Master Rudge was a 
member of the fraternity (which, indeed, I kne’^, having been 
out with his people once or twice, as I have told, to my shame). 
‘‘ Perhaps there were other people of my acquaintance who 
belonged to the same society ? ’’ the Doctor said dryly. ‘‘ Gee 
up, Daisy ! There were other people of my acquaintance, who 
were to be found at Winchelsea as well as at Rye. Your pre- 
cious one-eyed enemy is in it ; so, I have no doubt, is Mon- 
sieur le Chevalier de la Motte ; so is — can you guess the name 
of any one besides, Denny ? 

“Yes, sir,’’ I said sadly; I knew my own grandfather was 
engaged in that traffic. “ But if — if others are, I promise you, 
on my honor, I never will embark in it,” I added. 

“ ’Twill be more dangerous now than it has been. There 
will be obstacles to crossing the Channel which the contraband 
gentlemen have not known for sometime past. Have you iiQt 
heard the news? ” 

“ What news ? ” Indeed I had thought of none but my 
own affairs. A post had come in that very evening from Lon- 
don, bringing intelligence of no little importance even to poor 
me, as it turned out. And the news was that his Majesty 
the King, having been informed that a treaty of amity 
and commerce had been signed between the Court of France' 
and certain persons employed by his Majesty’s revolted sub- 
jects in North America, “ has judged it necessary to send 
orders to his ambassador to withdraw from the French Couri., 
* * * * relying with the firmest confidence upon the 

zealous and affectionate support of his faithful people, he is 
determined to prepare to exert, if it should be necessary, all 
the forces and resources of his kingdoms which he trusts will 
be adequate to repel every insult and attack .and to maintain 
and uphold the power and reputation of this country.” 


THE LAST OF MY SCHOOL-DA YS. 685 

So as I was coming out of Rye court-house, thinking of 
nothing but my enemies, and my trial, and my triumphs, post- 
boys were galloping all over the land to announce that we 
were at war with France. One of them, as we made our way 
home, clattered past us with his twanging horn, crying his news 
of war with France. As we wound along the plain, we could 
see the French lights across the Channel. My life has lasted 
for fifty years since then, and scarcely ever since, but for very, 
very brief intervals, has that baleful war-light ceased to burn. 

The messenger who bore this important news arrived after 
we left Rye, but, riding at a much quicker pace than that which 
our Doctor’s nag practised, overtook us ere we had reached our 
own town of Winchelsea. All our town was alive with th6 news 
in half an hour ; and in the market-place, the public-houses, and 
from house to house, people assembled and talked. So we 
were at war again with mur neighbors across the Channel, as 
well as with our rebellious children in America ; and the rebel- 
lious children were having the better of the parent at this time. 
We boys at Pocock’s had fought the war stoutly and with great 
elation at first. Over our maps we had pursued the rebels, and 
beaten them in repeated encounters. We routed them on Long 
Island. We conquered them at Brandywine. We vanquished 
them gloriously at Bunker’s Hill. We marched triumphantly 
into Philadelphia with Howe. We were quite bewildered when 
we had to surrender with General Burgoyne at Saratoga; 
being, somehow, not accustomed to hear of British armies sur- 
rendering, and British valor being beat. We had a half-holiday 
for Long Island,” says Tom Parrot, sitting next to mein school. 

I suppose we shall be flogged all round for Saratoga.” As 
for those Frenchmen, we knew of their treason for a long time 
past, and were gathering up wrath against them. Protestant 
Frenchmen, it was agreed, were of a different sort ; and I think 
the banished Huguenots of France have not been unworthy 
subjects of our new sovereign. 

There was one dear little Frenchwoman in Winchelsea who 
I own was a sad rebel. When Mrs. Barnard, talking about the 
war, turned round to Agnes and said, Agnes my child, on what ^ 
side are you?” Mademoiselle de Barr pushed very red, and 
said, I am a French girl, and I am of the side of my country. 
Vive la France ! vive le Roi ! ” 

Oh, Agnes ! oh, you perverted, ungrateful little, little 
monster ! ” cries Mrs. Barnard, beginning to weep. 

But the Doctor, far from being angry, smiled and looked 
pleased ; and making a mock reverence, he said, “ Mademoi- 


686 


DENIS DUVAD 


selle de Saveme, I think a little Frenchwoman should be for 
France ; and here is the tray, and we won’t fight until after 
supper.” And as he spoke that night the prayer appointed by 
his Church for the time of war — prayed that we might be armed 
with His defence who is the only giver of all victory — I thought 
I never heard the good man’s voice more touching and solemn.' 

When this daily and nightly ceremony was performed at the 
Rectory, a certain little person who belonged to the Roman 
Catholic faith used to sit aloof, her spiritual instructors forbid- 
ding her to take part in our English worship. When it was over, 
and the Doctor’s household had withdrawn. Miss Agnes had a 
flushed, almost angry face. 

“ But what am I to do, aunt Barnard } ” said the little rebel. 
“ If I pray for you, I pray that my country may be conquered, 
and that you may be saved and delivered out of our hands.” 

“ No, faith, my child, I think we wilUnot call upon thee for 
Ameri,” says the. Doctor, patting her cheek. 

I don’t know why you should wish to prevail over iny 
country,” whimpers the little maid. I am sure that I won’t 
pray thct any harm may happen to you, and aunt Barnard, and 
Denny — never, never ! ” And in a passion-of tears, she buried 
her head against the breast of the good man, and we were all 
not a little moved. 

Hand in hand we two young ones walked from the Rectory 
to the Priory House, which was only too near. I paused ere I 
rang at the bell, still holding her wistful little hand in mine. 

You will never be my enemy, Denny, will you ? ” she said, 
looking up. 

“ My dear,” I faltered out, “ I will love you for ever and 
ever ! ” I thought of the infant whom I brought home in my 
arms from the sea-shore, and once more my dearest maiden was 
held in them, and my heart throbbed with an exquisite bliss. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

I ENTER HIS majesty’s NAVY. 

I PROMISE )^ou there was no doubt or hesitation next Sun- 
day regarding our good rector’s opinions. Ever since the war 
with America began, he had, to the best of his power, exhorted 


/ ENTER HIS MAJESTY^ S NA VY. 687 

his people to be loyal, and testified to the authority of Caesar, 
War,’^ he taught, is not altogether an evil ; and ordained of 
Heaven, as our illnesses and fevers doubtless are, for our good. 
It teaches obedience and contentment under privations ; it forti- 
fies courage ; it tests loyalty ; it gives occasion for showing mer- 
cifulness of heart ; moderation in victory ; endurance and cheer- 
fulness under defeat. The brave who do battle victoriously in 
their country's cause leave a legacy of honor to their children. 
We English of the present day are the better for Cre^y, and 
Agincourt, and Blenheim. I do not grudge the Scots their day 
of Bannockburn, nor the French their Fontenoy. Such valor 
proves the manhood of nations. When we have conquered the 
American rebellion, as I have no doubt we shall do, I trust it 
will be found that these rebellious children of ours have com- 
ported themselves in a manner becoming our English race, that 
they have been hardy and resolute, merciful and moderate. In 
that Declaration of War against France, which had just reached 
us, and which interests all England, and the men of this coast 
especially, I have no m.ore doubt in my mind that the right is 
on our side, than I have that Queen Elizabeth had a right to 
resist the Spanish Armada. In an hour of almost equal peril, I 
pray we may skow the same watchfulness, constancy, and valor ; 
bracing ourselves to do the duty before us, and leaving the issue 
to the Giver of all Victory.’^ 

Ere he left the pulpit, our good rector announced that he 
would call a meeting for next market-day in our town-hall — a 
meeting of gentry, farmers, and seafaring men, to devise means 
for the defence of our coast and harbors. The French might 
be upon us any day ; and all our people were in a buzz of ex- 
citement, Volunteers and Fencibles patrolling our shores, and 
fishermen^s glasses forever on the lookout towards the opposite 
coast. 

We had a great meeting in the town-hall, and of the speakers 
it was who shou]^ be most loyal to King and country. Subscrip- 
tions for a Defence Fund were straightway set afoot. It was 
determined the Cinque Port towns should raise a regiment of 
Fencibles. In Winchelsea alone the gentry and chief tradesmen 
agreed to raise a troop of volunteer horse to patrol along the 
shore and communicate ^ith depots of the regular military 
formed at Dover, Hastings, and Deal. The fishermen were 
enrolled to serve as coast and look-out men. From Margate 
to Folkestone the coast was watched and patrolled : and priva- 
teers were equipped and sent to sea from many of the ports 
along our line. On the French shore we heard of similar war- 


688 


DENIS DUVAL. 


like preparations. The fishermen on either coast did not harm 
each other as yet, though presently they too fell to blows . and 
I have sad reason to know that a certain ancestor of mine did 
not altogether leave off his relations with his French friends. 

However, at the meeting in the town-hall, grandfather came 
forward with a subscription and a long speech. He said that 
he and his co-religionists and countrymen of France had now 
for near a century experienced British hospitality and freedom ; 
that when driven from home by Papist persecution, they had 
found protection here, and that now was the time for French 
Protestants to show that they were grateful and faithful sub- 
jects of King George. Grandfather’s speech was very warmly 
received \ that old man had lungs, and a knack of speaking, 
which never failed him. He could spin out sentences by the 
yard, as I knew, who had heard him expound for half hours 
together with that droning voice which had long ceased 
(Heaven help me !) to carry conviction to the heart of grand- 
father’s graceless grandson. 

When he had done, Mr. George Weston, of the Priory, spoke, 
and with a good spirit too. (He and my dear f7'iend.^ Mr, 
were both present, and seated with the gentlefolks and magis- 
trates at the raised end of the hall.) Mr. Geojge said that as 
Mr. Duval had spoken for the French Protestants, he, for his 
part, could vouch for the loyalty of another body of men, the 
-Roman Catholics of England. In the hour of danger he trusted 
that he and his brethren were as good subjects as any Protes- 
tants in the realm. And as a trilling test of his loyalty — though 
he believed his neighbor Duval was a richer man than himself 
(grandfather shrieked a “ No, no ! ” and there was a roar of 
laughter in the hall) — he offered as a contribution to a defence 
fund to lay down two guineas for Mr. Duval’s one ! 

I will give my guinea, I am sure,” says grandfather, very 
meekly, ‘‘ and may that poor man’s mite be accepted and use- 
ful ! ” 

One guinea ! ” roars Weston ; I will give a hundred 
guineas ! ” 

“ And I another hundred,” says his brother. “We will 
show, as Roman Catiiolic gentry of England, that we are not 
inferior in loyality to our Protestant brethren.” 

“ Put my fazer-in-law Peter Duval down for one ’ondred 
guinea ! ” calls out my mother, in her deep voice. “ Put me 
down for twenty-fife guinea, and my son Denis for twenty-fife 
guinea ! We have eaten of English bread and we are grateful, 
and we sing with all our hearts, God save King George I ” 


/ ENTER HIS MAJESTY'S NA VY, 689 

Mother^s speech was received with great applause. Farmers, 
gentry, shopkeepers, rich and poor, crowded forward to offer their 
subscription. Before the meeting broke up, a very handsome sum 
was promised for the arming and equipment of the Winchelsea 
Fencibles ; and old Colonel Evans, who had been present at 
Minden and Fontenoy, and young Mr. Barlow, who had lost a 
leg at Brandywine, said that they would superintend the drill- 
ing of the Winchelsea Fencibles, until such time as his Majesty 
should send officers of his own to command the corps. It was 
agreed that everybody spoke and acted ju/ith public spirit. 
“ Let the French land ! was our cry. “ The men of Rye, the 
meffi of Winchelsea, the men of Hastings, will have a guard of 
honor to receive them on the shore ! 

That the French intended to try and land was an opinion 
pretty general amongst us, especially when his Majesty’s proc- 
lamation came, announcing the great naval and military arma- 
ments which the enemy was preparing. We had certain com7nu7ii- 
cations with Boulogne, Calais, and Dunkirk still, and our fishing- 
boats sometimes went as far as Ostend. Our informants 
brought us full news of all that was going on in those ports ; 
of the troops assembled there, and royal French ships and 
privateers fitted out. I was not much surprised one night to 
find our old Boulogne ally Bidois smoking his pipe with grand- 
father in the kitchen, and regaling himself with a glass of his 
own brandy, which I know had not paid unto Caesar Caesar’s 
due. The 'pigeons on the hill were making their journeys still. 
Once when I went up to visit Farmer Perreau, I found M. de 
la Motte and a companion of his sending off one of these birds, 
and La Motte’s friend said sulkily, in German, ‘‘ What does the 
little Spitzbube do here t ” ‘‘ Versteht vielleicht Deutsch,” mur- 
mured La Motte, hurriedly, and turned round to me with a grin 
of welcome, and asked news of grandfather and my mother. 

This ally of the Chevalier’s was a Lieutenant Liitterloh, 
who had served in America in one of the Hessian -regiments 
on our side, and who was now pretty often in Winchelsea, 
where he talked magnificently about war and his own achieve- 
ments, both on the Continent and in our American provinces. 
He lived near Canterbury as I heard. I guessed, of course, 
that he was one of the ‘‘ Mackerel ” party, and engaged in 
smuggling, like La Motte, the Westons, and my graceless old 
grandfather and his ally, Mr. Rudge, of Rye. I shall have 
presently to tell how bitterly Monsieur de la Motte had after- 
wards to rue his acquaintance with this German. 

Knowing the Chevalier’s intimacy with the gentlemen con- 
44 


DENIS DUVAL, 


690 

nected with the Mackerel fishery, I had little cause to be sur- 
prised at seeing him and the German captain together ; though 
a circumstance now arose, which might have induced me to 
suppose him engaged in practk:es yet more lawless and dan- 
gerous than smuggling. I was walking up to the hill — must I 
let slip the whole truth, madame, in my memoirs ? Well, it 
never did or will hurt anybody ; and, as it only concerns you 
and me, may be told without fear. I frequently, I say, walked 
up the hill to look at these pigeons, for a certain young person 
was a great lover of pigeons too, and occasionally would come 
to see Farmer Perreau’s columbarium. Did I love the sight of 
this dear white dove more than any other ? Did it come some- 
times fluttering to my heart ? Ah ! the old blood throbs there 
with the mere recollection. I feel — shall we say how many 
years younger, my dear ? In fine, those little walks to the 
pigeon-house are among the sweetest of all our stores of mem- 
ories. 

I was coming away, then, once from this house of billing 
and cooing, when I chanced to espy an old schoolmate, Thomas 
Measom by name, who was exceedingly proud of his new uni- 
form as a private of our regiment of Winchelsea Fencibles, was 
never tired of wearing it, and always walked out with his fire- 
lock over his shoulder. As I came up to Tom, he had just 
discharged his piece, and hit his bird too. One of Farmer 
Perreau’s pigeons lay dead at Tom’s feet — one of the carrier 
pigeons, and the young fellow was rather scared at what he 
had done, especially when he saw a little piece of paper tied 
under the wing of the slain bird. 

He could not read the message, which was written in our 
German handwriting, and was only in three lines, which I was 
better able to decipher than Tom. I supposed at first that the 
message had to do with the smuggling business, in which so 
many of our friends were engaged, and Measom walked off 
rather hurriedly, being by no means anxious to fall into the 
farmer’s hands, who would be but ill-pleased at having one of 
his birds killed. 

I put the paper in my pocket, not telling Tom what I 
thought about the matter : but I did have a thought, and deter- 
mined to converse with my dear Doctor Barnard regarding it. 
I asked to see him at the Rectory, and there read to him the 
contents of the paper which the poor messenger was bearing 
when Tom’s ball brought him down. 

My good Doctor was not a little excited and pleased when 
I interpreted the pigeon’s message to him, and especially 


I ENTER HIS MAJESTY'S NAVY, . 


691 

praised me for my reticence with Tom upon the subject. “ It 
may be a mare’s nest we have discovered, Denny, my boy,” 
says the Doctor ; it may be a matter of importance. I will 
see Colonel Evans on this subject to-night.” We went off to 
Mr. Evans’ lodgings : he was the old officer who had fought 
under the Duke of Cumberland, and was, like the Doctor, a 
justice of peace for our county. I translated for the Colonel 
the paper, which was to the following effect : — 

[Left blank by Mr. Thackeray.] 

\ 

Mr. Evans looked at a paper before him, containing an au- 
thorized list of the troops at the various Cinque Port stations, 
and found the poor pigeon’s information quite correct. ‘‘Was 
this the Chevalier’s writing.? ” the gentleman asked. No, I did 
not think it was M. de la Motte’s handwriting. Then I men- 
tioned the other German in whose- company I had seen M. de 
la -Motte : the Monsieur Liitterloh whom Mr. Evans said he 
knew quite well. “ If Liitterloh is engaged in the business,” 
said Mr. Evans, “we shall know more about it;” and he whis- 
pered something to Dr. Barnard. Meanwhile he praised me 
exceedingly for my caution, enjoined me to say nothing regard- 
ing the matter, and to tell my comrade to hold his tongue. 

As for Tom Measom he was less cautious. Tom talked 
about his adventures to one or two crofties ; and to his parents, 
who were tradesmen like my own. They occupied a snug 
house in Winchelsea, with a garden and a good paddock. One 
day their horse was found dead in the stable. Another day 
their cow burst and died. Th^e used to be strange acts of 
revenge perpetrated in those days ; and farmers, tradesmen, or 
gentry, who rendered themselves obnoxious to certain parties^ 
had often to rue the enmity which they provoked. That my 
unhappy old grandfather was, and remained in the smugglers’ 
league, I fear is a fact which I can’t deny or palliate. He paid 
a heavy penalty to be sure, but my narrative is not advanced 
far enough to allow of my telling how the old man was visited 
for his sins. 

There came to visit our Winchelsea magistrates Captain 
Pearson, of the “Serapis” frigate, then in the Downs; and I 
remembered this gentleman, having seen him at the house of 
my kind patron, Sir Peter Denis, in London. Mr. Pearson 
also recollected me as the little boy who had shot the highway* 
man ; and was much- interested when he heard of the carrier 
pigeon, and the news which he bore. It appeared that he, as 


DENIS DUVAL. 


692 

well as Colonel Evans, was acquainted with Mr. Llitterloh. 
“ You are a good lad,^’ the Captain said ; “ but we know,” said 
the Captain, “ all the news those birds carry.” 

All this time our whole coast was alarmed, and hourly ex- 
pectant of a French invasion. The French fleet was said to 
outnumber ours in the Channel : the French army, we knew, 
was enormously superior to our own. I can remember the 
terror and the excitement ; the panic of some, the braggart 
behavior of others ; and specially I recall the way in which our 
church was cleared one Sunday, by a rumor which ran through 
the pews, that the French were actually Janded. How the 
people rushed away from the building, and some of them^whom 
I remember the loudest among the braggarts, and singing their 
“ Come if you dare ! ” Mother and I in our pew, and Captain 
Pearson in the rector^s, were the only people who sat out the 
sermon, of which Doctor Barnard would not abridge a line, and 
which, I own, I thought was extremely tantalizing and provok- 
ing. He gave the blessing with more than ordinary slowness 
and solemnity ; and had to open his own pulpit door and stalk 
down the steps without the accompaniment of his usual escort, 
the clerk, who had skipped out of his desk, and run away like 
the rest of the congregation. Doctor Barnard had me home 
to dinner at the Rectory ; my good mother being much too 
shrewd to be jealous of this kindness shown to me and not to 
her. When she waited ^on Mrs. Barnard with her basket of 
laces and perfumeries, mother stood as became her station as 
a tradeswoman. ‘‘ For thee, my son, ’tis differeiit,” she said. 
‘‘ I will have thee be a gentleman.” And faith, I hope I have 
done the best of my humble endeavor to fulfil the good lady’s 
wish. 

The war, the probable descent of the French, and the 
means of resisting the invasion, of course formed the subject 
of the gentlemen’s conversation ; and though I did not under- 
stand all that passed, I was made to comprehend subsequently, 
and may as well mention facts here which only came to be ex- 
plained to me later. The pigeons took over certain informa- 
tion to France, in return for that which they brought. By 
these and other messengers our Government was kept quite 
well instructed as to the designs and preparations of the enemy, 
and I remember how it was stated that his Majesty had occult 
correspondents of, his own in France, whose information was 
of surprising accuracy. Master Llitterloh dabbled in the inform- 
ation line. He had been a soldier in America, a recruiting 
crimp here, and I know not what besides ; but the information he 


2 ENTER HIS MAJESTY'S NAVY. 


693' 


gave was given under the authority of his employers, to whom in 
return he communicated the information he received from 
France. The worthy gentleman was, in fact, a spy by trade ; 
and though he was not born to be hanged, came by an awful 
payment for his treachery, as I shall have to tell in due time. 
As for M. de la Motte, the gentlemen were inclined to think 
that his occupation was smuggling, not treason, and in that 
business the Chevalier was allied with scores, nay hundreds, 
of people round about him. One I knew, my pious grandpapa : 
other two lived at the Priory, and I could count many more, 
even in our small town, namely, all the Mackerel men to 
whom I had been sent on the night of poor Madame de Sa- 
verene’s funeral. 

Captain Pearson shook me by the hand very warmly when 
I rose to go home, and I saw, by the way in which the good 
Doctor regarded me, that he was meditating some special kind- 
ness in my behalf. It came very soon, and at a moment when 
I was plunged in the very dismallest depths of despair. My 
dear little Agnes, though a boarder at the house of those 
odious Westons, had leave given to her to visit Mrs. Barnard ; 
and that kind lady never failed to give me some signal by which 
i knew that my little sweetheart was at the Rectory. One day 
the message would be, “ The^rector wants back his volume of 
the ‘ Arabian Nights,’ and Denis had better bring it.” Anbther 
time, my dearest Mrs. Barnard would write on a card, “You 
may come to tea, if you have done your mathematics well,” or, 
“ you may have a French lesson,” and so forth — and there, sure 
enough, would be my sweet little tutoress. How old, my dear, 
was Juliet when she and young Capulet began their loves ? My 
sweetheart had not done playing with dolls when our little pas- 
^on began to bud : and the sweet talisman of innocence I wore 
in my heart hath never left me through life, and shielded me 
from many a Jemptation. 

Shall I make a clean breast of it ? We young hypocrites 
used to write each other little notes, and pop them in certain 
cunning corners known to us two. Juliet used to write in a 
great round hand in French ; Romeo replied, I dare say, with 
doubtful spelling. 

We had devised sundry queer receptacles where our letters 
lay paste rest ante. There was the China pot-pourri jar on the 
Japan cabinet in the drawing-room. There, into the midst 
of the roses and spices, two cunning young people used to 
thrust their hands, and stir about spice and rose-leaves, until 
they lighted upon a little bit of folded paper more fragrant and 


DENIS DUVAL. 


694 

precious than all your flowers and cloves. Then in the hall 
we had a famous post-office, namely, the barrel of the great 
blunderbuss over the mantel-piece, from which hung a ticket on 
which “ loaded ’’ was written, only I knew better, having helped 
Martin, the Doctor’s man, to clean the gun. Then in the 
churchyard under the wing of the left cherub on Sir Jasper 
Billing’s tomb, there was a certain hole in which we put little 
scraps of paper written in a cipher devised by ourselves, and 
on these scraps of paper we wrote : — well, can you guess what ? 
We wrote the old song which young people have sung ever 
since singing began. We wrote “Amo, amas,” &c., in our 
childish handwriting. Ah ! thanks be to heaven, though the 
hands tremble a little now, they write the words still ! My 
dear, the last time I was in Winchelsea, I went and looked at 
Sir Jasper’s tomb, and at the hole under the cherub’s wing j 
there was only a little mould and moss there. Mrs. Barnard 
found and read one or more of these letters, as the dear lady 
told me afterwards, but there was no harm in them ; and when 
the Doctor put on his gra?id serieux (as to be sure he had a 
right to do), and was for giving the culprits a scolding, his wife 
reminded him of a time when he was captain of Harrow School, 
and found time to write other exercises than Greek or Latin to 
a young lady who lived in the village. Of these matters, I say, 
she told me in later days ; in all days, after our acquaintance 
began, she was my truest friend and protectress. 

But this dearest and happiest season of my life (for so I 
think it, though I am at this moment happy, most happy, and 
thankful) was to come to an abrupt ending, and poor Humpty 
Dumpty having climbed the wall of bliss, was to have a great 
and sudden fall, which, for a while, perfectly crushed and be- 
wildered him. I have said what harm came to my companion 
Tom Measom, for meddling in Monsieur Liitterloh’s affairs 
and talking of them. Now, there were two who knew Mein- 
herr’s secret, Tom Measom, namely, and Denis Duval ; and 
though Denis held his tongue about the matter, except in con- 
versing with the rector and Captain Pearson, Ltitterloh came 
to know that I had read and explained the pigeon-despatch of 
which Measom had shot the bearer ; and, indeed, it was Cap- 
tain Pearson himself, with whom the German had sundry 
private dealings, who was Lutterloh’s informer. Llitterloh’s 
rage, and that of his accomplice, against me, when they learned 
the unlucky part I had had in the discovery, were still greater 
than their wrath against Measom. The Chevalier de la Motte, 
who had once been neutral, and even kind to me, was con- 


/ ENTER HIS MAJESTY^ S NA VY, 695 

firmed in a steady hatred against me, and held me as an enemy 
whom he was determined to get out of his way. And hence 
came that catastrophe which precipitated Humpty Dumpty 
Duval, Esq., off the wall from which he was gazing at his be- 
loved, as she disported in her garden below. 

One evening — shall I ever forget that evening? It was Fri- 
day, [Left blank by Mr. Thackeray] — after my little maiden had 
been taking tea with Mrs. Barnard, I had leave to escort her to 
her home at Mr. Weston^s at the Priory, which is not a hundred 
yards from the Rectory door. All the evening the company 
had been talking about battle and danger, and invasion, and 
the war news from France and America ; and my little maiden 
sat silent, with her great eyes looking at one speaker and 
another, and stitching at her sampler. At length the clock 
tolled the hour of nine, when Miss Agnes must return to her 
guardian. I had the honor to serve as her escort, and would 
have wished the journey to be ten times as long as that brief 
one between the two houses. “ Good-night, Agnes ! Good- 
night, Denis ! On Sunday I shall see you ! ’’ We whisper one 
little minute Under the stars ; the little hand lingers in mine 
with a soft pressure ; we hear the servants’ footsteps over the 
marble floor within, and I am gone. Somehow, at night and 
at morning, at lessons and play, I was always thinking about 
this little maid. 

“ I shall see you on Sunday,” and this was Friday! Even 
that interval seemed long to me. Little did either of us know 
what a long separation was before us, and what strange changes, 
dangers, adventures, I was to undergo ere I again should press 
that dearest hand. 

The gate closed on her, and I walked away by the church- 
wall, and towards my own home. I was thinking of that happy, 
that unforgotten night of my childhood, when I had been the 
means of rescuing the dearest little maiden from an awful 
death ; how, since then, I had cherished her with my love of 
love j and what a blessing she had been to my young life. For 
many years she was its only cheerer and companion. At home 
I had food and shelter, and, from mother at least, kindness, 
but no society; it was not until I became a familiar of the 
good Doctor’s roof that I knew friendship and kind companion- 
ship. What gratitude ought I not to feel for a .boon so precious 
as there was conferred on me ? Ah, I vowed, I prayed, that I 
might make myself worthy of such friends ; and so was sauntering 
homewards, lost in these happy thoughts, when — when some- 
thing occurred which at once decided the whole course of my 
after-life. 


696 


DENIS DUVAL, 


This something was a blow with a bludgeon across my eat 
and temple which sent me to the ground utterly insensible. I 
remember half a dozen men darkling in an alley by which I had 
to pass, then a scuffle and an oath or two, and a voice crying, 
“ Give it him, curse him ! ’’ and then I was down ow the pave- 
ment as flat and lifeless as the flags on which 1 lay. When I 
woke up, I was almost blinded with blood ; I was in a covered 
cart with a few more groaning wretches ; and when I uttered a 
moan, a brutal voice growled out with man}r oaths an instant 
order to be silent, or my head should be broken again. I woke 
up in a ghastly pain and perplexity, but presently fainted once 
more. When 1 awoke again to a half-consciousness I felt myself 
being lifted from the cart and carried, and then flung into the 
bows of a boat, where I suppose I was joined by the rest of the 
dismal cart’s company. Then some one came and washed my 
bleeding head with salt water (which made it throb and ache 
very cruelly). Then the man, whispering, “ I’m a friend,” bound 
my forehead tight with a handkerchief, and the boat pulled out 
to a brig that was lying as near to land as she could come, and 
the same man who had struck and sworn at me would have 
stabbed me once more as I reeled up the side, but that my 
friend interposed in my behalf. It was Tom Hookham, to whose 
family I had given the three guineas, and who assuredly saved 
my life on that day, for the villain who attempted it after- 
wards confessed that he intended to do me an injury. I was 
thrust into the forepeak with three or four i^jore maimed 
and groaning wretches, and, the wind serving, the lugger made 
for her destination, whatever that might be. What a horrid 
night of fever and pain it was ! I remember I fancied I was 
carrying Agnes out of the water ; I called out her name repeat- 
edly, as Tom Hookham informed me, who came with a lantern 
and looked at us poor wretches huddled in our shed. Tom 
brought me more water, and in pain and fever I slept through 
a wretched night. 

In the morning our tender came up with a frigate that was 
lying off a town, and I was carried up the ship’s side on Hook- 
ham’s arm. The Captain’s boat happened to pull from shore 
at the very same time, and the Captain and his friends, and 
our wretched party of pressed men with their captors, thus 3to6d 
face to face. My wonder and delight were not a little aroused 
when I saw the Captain was no other than my dear rector’s 
friend. Captain Pearson. My face was bound up, and so pale 
and bloody as to be scarcely recognizable. “ So, my man,” he 
said, rather sternly, ‘‘you have been for fighting, have you 


i 








r BIfTER ms MAJESTY'S NAVY. 697 

This comes of resisting men employed on his Majesty’s 
service/’ 

“ I never resisted,” I said ; “ I was struck from behind, 
Captain Pearson.” 

The Captain looked at me with a haughty, surprised air. 
Indeed, a more disreputable-looking lad he scarcely could see. 
After a moment he said, “ Why, bless my ^oul, is it you, my 
boy ? Is it young Duval ? ” 

‘‘Yes, sir,” I said; and whether from emotion, or fever, or 
loss of blood and weakness, I felt my brain going again, and 
once more fainted and fell. 

When I came to myself, I found myself in a berth in the 
“ Serapis,” where there happened to be but one other patient. 
I had had fever and delirium for a day, during which it appears 
I was constantly calling out, “Agnes, Agnes ! ” and olferingto 
shoot highwaymen. A very kind surgeon’s mate had charge of 
me, and showed me much more attention than a poor wounded 
lad could have had a right to expect in my wretched humiliating 
position. On the fifth day I was well again, though still very 
weak and pale ; but not too weak to be unable to go to the 
Captain when he sent for me to his cabin. My friend the 
surgeon’s mate showed me the way. 

Captain Pearson was writing at his table, but sent away 
his secretary, and when the latter was gone shook hands with 
me very kindly, and talked unreservedly about the strange 
accident which had brought me on board his ship. His officer 
had information, he said, “ and I had information,” the Cap- 
tain went on to say, “ that some very good seamen of what we 
called the Mackerel party were to be taken at a public-house 
in Winchelsea,” and his officer netted a half dozen of them 
there, “ who will be much better employed ” (says Captain 
Pearson) “in serving the King in one of his Majesty’s vessels, 
than in cheating him on board their own. You were a stray 
fish that was caught along with the rest. I know your story. 
I have talked it over with our good friends at the Rectory. For 
a young fellow, you have managed to make yourself some queer 
enemies in your native town ; and you are best out of it. On 
the night when I first saw you, I promised our friends to take 
you as a first-class volunteer. In due time you will pass your 
examination, and be rated as a midshipman. Stay — your 
mother is in Deal. You can go ashore, and she will fit you 
out. Here are letters for you. I wrote to Dr. Barnard as soon 
as I found who you were/’ 

With this, I took leave of my good patron and captain, and 


698 


DENIS DUVAL. 


ran off to read 5ny two letters. One, from Mrs- Barnard and 
the Doctor conjointly, told how alarmed they had been at my 
being lost, until Captain Pearson wrote to say how I had been 
found. The letter from my good mother informed me, in her 
rough way, how she was waiting at the ‘‘ Blue Anchor Inn in 
Deal, and would have come to me ; but my new comrades 
would laugh at a -rough old woman coming off in a shore-boat 
to look after her boy. It was better that I should go to her at 
Deal, where I should be fitted out in a way becoming an officer 
in his Majesty’s service. To Deal accordingly I went by the 
next boat ; the good-natured surgeon’s mate, who had attended 
me and taken a fancy <0 me, lending me a clean shirt, and 
covering the wound on my head neatly, so that it was scarcely 
seen under my black hair. “ Le pauvre cher enfant ! com me il 
est pale ! ” How my mother’s eyes kindled with kindness as she 
saw me ! The good soul insisted on dressing my hair with her 
own hands, and tied it in a smart queue with a black ribbon. 
Then she took me off to a tailor in the town, and provided me 
with an outfit a lord’s son might have brought on board. My 
uniforms were ready in a very short time. Twenty-four hours 
after they were ordered Mr. Levy brought them to our inn, and 
I had the pleasure of putting them on ; and walked on the 
Parade, with my hat cocked, my hanger bymy side, and mother 
on my arm. Though I was perfectly well pleased with myself, 
I think she was the prouder of the two. To one or two trades- 
men and their wives, whom she knew, she gave a most dignified 
nod of recognition this day ; but passed on without speaking, 
as if she would have them understand that they ought to keep 
their distance when she was in such fine company. “ When I 
am in the shop, I am in the shop, and my customers’ very 
humble servant,” said she ; “but when I am walking on Deal 
Parade with thee, I am walking with a young gentleman in his 
Majesty’s navy. And Heaven has blessed us of late, my child, 
and thou shalt have the means of making as good a figure as 
any young officer in the service.” And she put such a great 
heavy purse of guineas into my pocket, that I wondered at her 
bounty. “ Remember, my son,” added she. “ thou are a gen- 
tleman now. Always respect yourself. Tradespeople are no 
company for thee. For me ’tis different. I am but a pooi 
hairdresser and shopkeeper.” We supped together at the 
“Anchor,” and talked about home, that was but two days off, 
and yet so distant. She never once mentioned my little maiden 
to me, nor did I somehow dare to allude to her. Mother had 
prepared a nice bedroom for me at the inn, to which she made 


/ ENTER HIS MA JESTY'S NA VY. 699 

me retire early, as I was still weak and iaint after my fever ; 
and when I was in my bed she came and knelt down by it, an^. 
with tears rolling down her furrowed face, offered up a prayer 
in her native German language, that He who had been pleased 
to succor me from perils hitherto, would guard me for the 
future, and watch over me in the voyage of life which was now 
about to begin. Now, as it is drawing to its close, I look back 
at it with an immense awe and thankfulness, for the strange 
dangers from which I have escaped, the great blessings I have 
enjoyed. 

I wrote a long letter to Mrs. Barnard, narrating my adven- 
tures as cheerfully as I could, though, truth to say, when I 
thought of home and a little Someone there, a large tear or two 
blotted my paper, but I had reason to be grateful for the kind- 
ness I had received, and was not a little elated at being actually 
a gentleman, and in a fair way to be an officer in his Majesty’s 
navy. 

As I was strutting on the Mall, on the second day of my 
visit to Deal, what should I see but my dear Dr. Barnard’s well- 
known post-chaise nearing us from the Dover Road ? The 
Doctor and his wife looked with a smiling surprise at my altered 
appearance ; and as they stepped out of their chaise at the inn, 
the good lady fairly put her arms round me, and gave me a 
kiss. Mother, from her room, saw the embrace, I suppose. 

Thou hast found good friends there, Denis, my son,” she 
said, with sadness in her deep voice. ’Tis well. They can be- 
friend thee better than I can. Now thou art well, I may depart 
in peace. When thou art ill, the old mother will come to thee, 
and will bless thee always, my son.” She insisted upon setting 
out on her return homewards that afternoon. She had friends 
at Hythe, Folkestone, and Dover (as I knew well), and would 
put up with one or other of them. She had before packed my chest 
with wonderful neatness. Whatever her feelings might 'be at 
our parting, she showed no signs of tears or sorrow, but 
mounted her little chaise in the inn-yard, and, without looking 
back, drove away on her solitary journey. The landlord of the 
‘‘ Anchor ” and his wife bade her farewell, very cordially and 
respectfully. They asked me, would I not step into the bar 
and take a glass of wine or spirits ? I have said that I never 
drank either; and suspect that my mother furnished my host 
with some of these stores out of those fishing-boats of which 
she was owner. ‘‘ If I had an only son, and such a good-look- 
ing one,” Mrs. Boniface was pleased to say (can I, after such a 
fine compliment, be so ungrateful as to forget her name ?) — “ If 


700 


DEJSrrs DUVAL, 


I had an only son, and could leave him as well off as Mrs. 
Duval can leave you, / wouldn’t send him to sea in war-time, 
Ihat I wouldn’t.” “ And though you don’t drink any wine, 
some of your friends on board may,” my landlord added, “ and 
they are always welcome at the ‘ Blue Anchor.’ ” This was 
not the first time I had heard that my mother was rich. “ If 
she be so,” I said to my host, “ indeed it is more than I know.” 
On which he and his wife both commended me for my caution ; 
adding with a knowing smile, “ We know more than we tell, 
Mr. Duval. Have you ever heard of Mr. Weston ? Have you 
ever heard of Monsieur de la Motte } We know where Bou- 
logne is, and Ost ” “ Hush, wife ! ” here breaks in my 

landlord. “ If the Captain don’t wish to talk, why should he ? 
There is the bell ringing from the ‘ Benbow ’ and your dinner 
going up to the Doctor, Mr. Duval.” It was indeed as he said, 
and I sat down in the company of my good friends, bringing 
a fine appetite to their table. 

The Doctor on his arrival had sent a messenger to his 
friend. Captain Pearson, and whilst we were at our meal, the 
Captain arrived in his own boat from the ship, and insisted that 
Dr. and Mrs*. JBarnard should take their dessert in his cabin on 
board. This procured Mr. Denis Duval the honor of an in- 
vitation, and I and my new sea-chest were accommodated in the 
boat and taken to the frigate. My box was consigned to the 
gunner’s cabin, where my hammock was now slung. After sit- 
ting a short time at Mr. Pearson’s table, a brother-midshipman 
gave me a hint to withdraw, and made the acquaintance of my 
comrades, of whom there were about a dozen on board the 
“ Serapis.” Though only a volunteer, I was taller and older 
than many of the midshipmen. They knew who I was, of 
course — the son of a shopkeeper at Winchelsea. Then, and 
afterwards, I had my share of rough jokes, you may be sure ; 
but I took them with good-humor ; and I had to fight my way 
as I had learned to do at school before. There is no need to 
put down here the number of black eyes and bloody noses 
which I received and delivered. I am sure I bore but little 
malice : and, thank heaven, never wronged a man so much as to 
be obliged to hate him afterwards. Certain men there were 
who hated me : but they are gone, and I aimhere, with a pretty 
clear conscience, heaven be praised ; and little the worse for 
their enmity. 

The first lieutenant of our ship, Mr. Page, was related to 
Mrs. Barnard, and this kind lady gave him such a character of 
her very grateful, humble servant, and narrated my adventures 


/ ENTER HIS MAJESTY'S NA VY. 


701 


to him so pathetically, that Mr. Page took me into his special 
favor, and interested some of my messmates in my behalf. The 
story of the highwayman caused endless talk and jokes against 
me which I took in good part, and established my footing 
among my messmates by adopting the plan I had followed at 
school, and taking an early opportunity to fight a well-known 
bruiser amongst our company of midshipmen. You must know 
they called me “ Soapsuds,’’ “ Powderpuff,” and like names, in 
consequence of my grandfather’s known trade of hairdresser ; 
and one of my comrades bantering me one day, cried, I say, 
Soapsuds, where was it you hit the highwayman ? ” There ! ” 
said I, and gave him a clean left-handed blow on his nose, 
which must have caused him to see a hundred blue lights. I 
know about five minutes afterwards he gave me just such an- 
other blow ; and we fought it out and were good friends ever 
after. What is this ? Did I not vow as I was writing the last 
page yesterday that I would not say a word about my prowess 
at fisticuffs ? You see we are ever making promises to be good, 
and forgetting them. I suppose other people can say as much. 

Before leaving the ship my kind friends once more desired 
to see me, and Mrs. Barnard, putting a finger to her lip, took 
out from her pocket a little packet, which she placed in my 
hand. I thought she was giving me money, and felt somehow 
disappointed at being so treated by her. But when she was 
gone to shore I opened the parcel, and found a locket there, 
and a little curl of glossy black hair. Can you guess whose ? 
Along with the locket was a letter in French, in a large girlish 
hand, in which the writer said, that night and day she prayed 
for her dear Denis. And where, think you, the locket is now ? 
where it has been for forty-two years, and where it will remain 
when a faithful heart that beats under it hath ceased to throb. 

At gunfire our friends took leave of the frigate, little know- 
ing the fate that was in store for many on board her. In three 
weeks from that day what a change ! The glorious misfortune 
which befell us is written in the annals of our country. 

On the very evening whilst Captain Pearson was entertain- 
ing his friends from Winchelsea, he received orders to sail for 
Hull, and place himself under the command of the Admiral there. 
From the Humber we presently were despatched northward to 
Scarborough. There had been not a little excitement along the 
whole northern coast for some time past, in consequence of the 
appearance of some American privateers, who had ransacked a 
Scottish nobleman’s castle, and levied contributions from a 
Cumberland seaport town. As we were close in with Scarbor- 


702 


DEmS DUVAL, 


ough a boat came off with letters from the magistrates of that 
place, announcing that this squadron had actually been seen off 
the coast. The commodore of this wandering piratical expedi- 
tion was known to be a rebel Scotchman : who fought with a 
rope round his neck to be sure. No doubt many of us young- 
sters vapored about the courage with which we would engage 
him, and made certain, if we could only mqet with him, of see- 
ing him hang from his own yard-arm. It was Diis aliter visum,, 
as we used to say at Pocock’s ; and it was we threw deuceace 
too. Traitor, if you will, was Monsieur John Paul Jones, after- 
wards knight of his Most Christian Majesty’s Order of Merit ; 
but a braver traitor never wore sword. 

We had been sent for in order to protect a fleet of merchant- 
men that were bound to the Baltic, and were to sail under the 
convoy of our ship and the Countess of Scarborough,” com- 
manded by Captain Piercy. And thus it came about that after 
being twenty-five days in his Majesty’s service, I had the fortune 
to be present at one of the most severe and desperate combats 
that has been fought in our or any time. 

I shall not attempt to tell that story of the battle of the 
23d September, which ended in our glorious Captain striking 
his own colors to our superior and irresistible enemy. Sir 
Richard has told the story of his disaster in words nobler than 
any I could supply, who, though indeed engaged in that fearful 
action in which our flag went down before a renegade Briton 
and his motley crew, saw but a very sm^l portion of the battle 
which ended so fatally for us. It did not commence till night- 
fall. How well I remember the sound of the enemy’s gun of 
which the shot crashed into our^side in reply to the challenge 
of our captain who hailed her ! Then came a broadside from 
us — the first I had ever heard in battle. 




« * « 


/ 


# 


NOTES ON DENIS DUVAL. 


The readers of the Cornhill Magazine have now read the 
last line written by William Makepeace Thackeray. The story 
breaks off as his life ended — full of vigor, and blooming with 
new promise like the apple-trees in this month of May : * the 
only difference between the work and the life is this, that the 
last chapters of the one have their little pathetical gaps and 
breaks of unfinished effort, the last chapters of the other were 
fulfilled and complete. But the life may be left alone ; while 
as for the gaps and breaks in his last pages, nothjng that we 
can write is likely to add to their significance. There they are ; 
and the reader’s mind has already fallen into them, with sensa- 
tions not to be improved by the ordinary commentator. If Mr. 
Thackeray himself could do it, that would be another thing. 
Preacher he called himself in some of the Roundabout dis- 
courses in which his softer spirit is always to be heard^ but he 
never had a text after his own mind so much as these last 
broken chapters would ^ive him now. There is the dateV^f a 
certain Friday to be filled in, and Time is no more. Is it very 
presumptuous to imagine the Roundabout that Mr. Thackeray 
would write upon this unfinished work of his, if he could come 
back to do it ? We do not think it is, or very difficult either. 
What Carlyle calls the divine gift of speech was so largely his, 
especially in his maturer years, that he made clear in what he 
did say pretty much what he would say about anything that en- 
gaged his thought; and we have only to imagine a discourse 
“ On the Two Women at the Mill,” t to read off upon our minds 
the sense of what Mr. Thackeray alone could have found lan- 
guage for. 

\^ain are these speculations — or are they vain ? Not if we 
try to think what he would think of his broken labors, consider- 
ing that one of these days our labors must be broken too. Still, 
there is not much to be said about it : and we pass on to the 

* last number of “ Denis Diival ” appeared in the Cornhill Magazine ol June j 1864. 

t “ Two women shall be grinding at the mill, one shall be taken and the other left.*^’ 


704 


NOTES TO DENIS DUVAE 


real business in hand, which is to show as well a^ we may what 
“ Denis Duval would have been had its author lived to com- 
plete his work. Fragmentary^ as it is, the story must always be 
of considerable importance, because it will stand as a warning 
to imperfect critics never to be in haste to cry of any intellect, 
“ His vein is worked out : there is nothing left in him but the 
echoes of emptiness.’^ The decriers were never of any import- 
ance, yet there is more than satisfaction, there is something 
like triumph in the mind of every honest man of letters when 
he sees, and knows everybody must see, how a genius which 
was sometimes said to hav^e been guilty of passing behind a 
cloud toward the evening of his day, came out to shine with 
new splendor before the day was done. “ Denis Duval ” is 
unfinished, but it ends that question. The fiery genius that 
blazed over the city in “ Vanity Fair,” and passed on to a ripe 
afternoon in ‘‘ Esmond,” is not a whit less great, it is only 
broader, more soft, more mellow and kindly, as it sinks too 
suddenly in Denis Duval.” 

This is said to introduce the settlement of another too-hasty 
notion which we believe to have been pretty generally accepted : 
namely, that Mr. Thackeray took little pains in the construction 
of his works. The truth is, that he very industriously did take 
pains. We find that out when we inquire, for the benefit of the 
readers of his Magazine, whether there is anything to tell of 
his designs for “ Denis Duval.” The answ^er comes in the form 
of many most careful notes, and memoranda of inquiry into 
minute matters of detail to make the story^//7/^. How many 
young novelists are there who haven't much genius to fall back 
upon, who yet, if they desired to set their hero down in Win- 
chelsea a hundred years ago for instance, would take the trouble 
to learn how the town was built, and what gate led to Rye (if 
the hero happened to have any dealings with that place), and 
who were its local magnates, and how it was governed 1 And 
yet this is what Mr. Thackeray did, though his investigation 
added not twenty lines to the story and no ‘(interest ” what- 
ever : it was simply so much conscientious effort to keep as 
near truth in feigning as he could. That Winchelsea had three 
gates, “ Newgate on S.W., Landgate on N.E., Strandgate (lead- 
ing to Rye) on S.E. that “the government was vested in a 
mayor and twelve jurats, jointly ; ” that “ it sends canopy 
bearers on occasion of a coronation,” &c., &c., &c., all is duly 
entered in a note-book with reference to authorities. And so 
about the refugees at Rye, and the French Reformed Church 
there ; nothing is written that history cannot vouch for. The 


NOTES TO DENIS DUVAL. 


705 

neat and orderly way in which the notes are set down is also 
remarkable. Each has its heading, as thus : 

“ Refugees at Rye.—hX Rye is a small settlement of French refugees, who are for the 
most part fishermen, and have a minister of their own. 

“ Frenth Refortued Church , — Wherever there is a sufficient number of faithful there is a 
church. The pastor is admitted to his office by the provincial synod, or the colloquy, pro- 
vided it be coniposed of seven pastors at least. Pastors are seconded in their duties by 
laymen, who take the title of Ancients, Elders, and Deacons precentors. The union of 
Pastors, Deacons, and Elders forms a consistory.” 

Of course there is no considerable merit in care like this, 
but it is a merit which the author of Denis Duval ” is not 
popularly credited with, and therefore it may as well be set 
down to him. Besides, it may serve as an example to fledge- 
ling geniuses of what he thought necessary to the perfection of 
his work. 

But the chief interest of these notes and memoranda lies in 
the outlook they give us upon the conduct of the story. It is 
not desirable to print them all ; indeed, to do so would be to 
copy a long list of mere references to books, magazines, and 
journals, where such byway bits of illustration are to be found 
as lit Mr. Thackeray’s mind to so vivid an insight into man- 
ners and character. Still, we are anxious to give the reader as 
complete an idea of the story as we can. 

First, here is a characteristic letter, in which Mr. Thackeray 
sketches his plot for the information of his publis^ier : — 

DEAR S 

“ I WAS born in the year 1764, at Winchelsea, where my father was a grocer and clerk 
of the church. Everybody in the place w-as a good deal connected with smuggling. 

“There used to come to our house a very noble French gentleman, called the Count 
UE LA Motte, and with him a German, the Baron de Lutterloh. My father used to 
take packages to Ostend and Calais for these two gentlemen, and perhaps I went to Paris 
once and saw the French queen. 

“The squire of our town was Squire Weston of the Priory, who, with his brother, kept 
one of the genteelest houses in the country. He was churchwarden of our church, and 
much respected. Yes, but if you read the Annual Register of 1781, you will find that on 
the 13th July the sheriffs attended at the Tower of London to receive custody of a De la 
Motte, a prisoner charged with high treason. The fact is, this Alsatian nobleman being in 
difficulties in his own country (where he had commanded the Regiment Soubise), came to 
London, and under pretence of sending prints to France and Ostend, supplied the French 
Ministers with accounts of the movements of the English fleets and troops. His go-be'tween 
was Lutterloh, a Brunswicker, who had been a crimping-agent, then a servant, who was a 
spy of France and Mr. Franklin, and who turned king’s evidence on La Motte, and hanged 
him. 

“ This Lutterloh, who had been a crimping-agent for German troops during the Ameri- 
can war, then a servant in London during the Gordon riots, then an agent for a spy, then a 
spy over a spy, I suspect to have been a consummate scoundrel, and doubly odious from 
speaking English with a German accent. 

“What if he wanted to marry that charming girl, who lived with Mr. Weston at 
Winchelsea? Ha! I see a mystery here. 

“ What if this scouncft-el, going to receive his pay from the English Admiral, with whom 
he was in communication at Portsmouth, happened to go on board the ‘ Royal George’ the 
day she went down? 

“As for George and Joseph Weston, of the Priory, lam sorry to say they were rascals 
too. 'They were tried for robbing the Bristol mail in 17S0 ; and being acquitted for want of 
evidence, were tried immediately after on another indictment for forgery — Joseph was ac- 

45 


.VOTES TO DEXIS DUVAE 


706 

quitted, but George was capitally convicted. But this did not help poor Joseph. Befor:. 
their trials, they and some others broke out of Newgate, and Joseph fired at, and wounded, 
a porter who tried to stop him, on Snow Hill. For this he was tried and found guilty on the 
Black Act, and hung along with his brother. 

“ Now, if I was an innocent participator in De la Motte’s treasons, and the Westons’ 
forgeries and robberies, what pretty scrapes 1 must have been in? 

“ I married the young woman, whom the brutal Liitterloh would have had for himself, 
and lived happy ever after.” 


Here, it will be seen, the general idea is very roughly 
sketched, and the sketch was not in all its parts carried out. 
Another letter, never sent to its destination, gives a somewhat 
later account of Denis, — 


“My grandfather’s name was Duval; he was a barber and perruquier by trade, and 
elder of the French Protestant Church at Winchelsea. I was sent to board with his corre- 
spondent, a Methodist grocer, at Rye. 

“ These two kept a fishing-boat, but the fish they caught w^as many and many a barrel of 
Nantz brandy, which w'e landed— never mind where — at a place to us well known. In the 

innocence of my heart, I — a child got leave to go out fishing. We used to go out at night 

and meet ships from the French coast. 

“ I learned to scuttle a marlinspike, 
reef a lee-scupper, 
keelhaul a bowsprit 

as well as the best of them. How well I remember the jabbering of the Frenchmen the 
-.first night as they handed the kegs over to us! One night we were fired inttT by his Maj- 
esty’s revenue cutter ‘ Lynx.’ 1 asked what th.ose balls w'ere fizzing in the water, <S:c. 

“ I wouldn’t go on w'ith the smuggling ; being converted by Mr. Wesley, who came to 
preach to us at Rye — but that is neither here nor there. ^ ^ *” 

In these letters neither “ my mother,” nor the Count de 
Saverne and his unhappy wife appear ; while Agnes exists only 
as ‘‘ that charming girl.” Count de la Motte, the Baron de 
lAitterloh, and the Westons, seem to have figured foremost in 

the author’s mind : thev are liistorical characters. In the first 

•/ 

letter, we are referred to the An?tual Register for the story of 
J )e la Motte and Liitterloh : and this is what we read there, — 


“ January 5, 1781. — A gentleman was taken into custody for treasonable practices, 
named Henry P'rancis de la Motte, which he bore with the title of baron annexed to it. He 
has resided in Bond Street, at a Mr. Otley’s, a woollen draper, for S(une time. 

“ When he was going up stairs at the Secretary of State’s office, in Cleveland Row, he 
dropped several papers on the staircase, which were immediately discovered by the messen- 
ger, and carried in with him to Lord Hillsborough. After his examination, he was com- 
mitted a close prisoner for high treason to the Tower. The papers taken from him are re- 
j)orted to be of the highest importance. Among them are particular lists of every ship of 
force in any of our yards and docks, &c., &c. 

. “ Ih consequence of the above papers being found, Henry Liitterloh, Esq., of Wick- 
ham, near Portsmouth, was afterwards apprehended and brought to town. The messengers 
found Mr. Liitterloh ready booted to go a hunting. When he understood their business, 
he did not discover th.e least embarrassment, but delivered his keys with the utmost readi- 
ness. * * * * Ml-. Liitterloh is a German, and had lately taken a house at Wickham, 

within a few miles of Portsmouth ; and as he kept a pack of hounds, and w'as considered as 
a good companion, he was well received by the gentlemen in the neighborhood. 

July 14, 1781. — Mr. Liitterloh’s testimony w'as of so serious a nature, that the court 
seemed in a state of astonishment during the whole of his long examination. He said that 
he embarked in a plot w'ith the prisoner in the year 1778, to furnish the P'rench court with 
secret intelligence of the Navy ; for which, at first, he received only eight guineas a month 
the importance of his information appeared, however, so clear to the prisoner, 
that he shortly after allowed him fifty guineas a month, besides many valuable, .gifts ', 
that, upon any emergency, he came post to town to ISl. de la iMotte, but commoi: 


NOTES TO DENIS DUVAL. 


707 


‘jccurrences relative to their treaty, he sent by the post. He identified the papers found in 
his garden, and the seals, he said, were M. de la Motte’s, and well known in France. He 
had been to Paris by direction of the prisoner, and was closeted with Monsieur Sartine, the 
French Minister. He had formed apian for capturing Governor Johnstone’s squadron, 
for which he demanded 8,000 guineas* and a third share of the ships, to be divided amongst 
the prisoner, himself, and his friend in a certain office, but the French court would not 
agree to yielding more than an eighth share of the squadron. After agreeing to enable the 
French to take the commodore, he w'ent to Sir Hugh Palliser, and offered a plan to take 
the French, and to defeat his original project with which he had furnished the French 
court. 

“The trial lasted for thirteen hours, when the jury, after a short deliberation, pronounced 
the i)risoner guilty, when sentence was immediately passed upon him ; the prisoner received 
the awful doom (he was condemned to be hanged, drawn, and quartered,) with great com- 
posure, but inveighed against Mr. Liitterloh in warm terms. * * * * His behavior 
throughout the whole of this trying scene exhibited a combination of manliness, steadiness, 
and presence of mind. He appeared at the same time polite, condescending, and unaffected, 
and, we presume, could never have stood so firm and collected at so awful a moment, if, 
when he felt himself fully convicted as a traitor to the State which^ gave him protection, he 
had not, however mistakenly, felt a conscious innocence within his own breast that he had 
devoted his life to the service of his country. 

* # # # * 

“ M. de la IMotte was about five feet ten inches in height, fifty years of age, and of a 
comely countenance ; his deportment was exceedingly genteel, and his eye was expressive 
of strong penetration. He wore a white cloth coat, and a linen waistcoat worked in tam- 
bour.” — Annual Re^^ister, vol. xxiv. p. 184. 

It is not improbable that from this narrative of a trial for 
high treason in 1781 the whole story radiated. These are the 
very men whom we have seen in Thackeray’s pages ; and it is 
a fine test of his insight and power to compare them as they lie 
embalmed in the Aimual Negister, and as they breathe again 
in “ Denis Duval.” The part they were to have played in the 
story is already intelligible, all but the way in which they were 
to have confused the lives of Denis and his love. ‘‘ ^ At least, 
Duval,’ De la Motte said to me when I shook hands with him 
and with all my heart forgave him, ‘ mad and reckless as I have 
been and fatal to all whom I loved, I have never allowed the 
child to want, and have supported her in comfort when I my- 
self was almost without a meal.’ ” What was the injury which 
]3enis forgave with all his heart? Fatal to all whom he loved, 
there are evidences that De la Motte was to have urged Lut- 
terloh’s pretensions to Agnes : whose story at this period we 
find inscribed in the note-book in one word — “ Henriette Iphi- 
genia.” For Agnes was christened Henriette originally, and 
Denis was called Blaise.* 


♦ Among the notes there is a little chronological table of events as they occur- 

“ Blaise, born 1763. 

Henriette de Barr was born in 1766-7. 

Her father went to Corsica, ’68. 

Mother fled, ’68. 

Father killed at B., ’69. 

Mother died, ’70 
Blaise turned out, ’79. 

Henriette l<f)Ly€VLa, ’81. 

La Motte’s catastrophe, ’82. 

Rodney’s action, ’82.” 


7o8 


NOTES TO DENIS DUVAL, 


As for M. Llitterloh, “ that consummate scoundrel, and 
doubly odious from speaking English with a German accent ' " 
— having hanged De la Motte, while- confessing that he had 
made a solemn engagement with him never to betray each other, 
and then immediately laying a wager that De la Motte would 
be hanged, having broken open a secretaire, and distinguished 
himself in various other ways — he seems to have gone to Win-^ 
chelsea, where it was easy for him to threaten or cajole the 
Westons into trying to force Agnes into his arms. She was 
living with these people, and we knowhow they discountenanced 
her faithful affection for Denis. Overwrought by the impor- 
tunities of Llitterloh and the Westons, she escaped to Dr. Bar- 
nard for protection ; and soon unexpected help arrived. The 
De Viomesnils, her mother’s relations, became suddenly con- 
vinced of the innocence of the Countess. Perhaps (and when 
we say perhaps, we repeat such hints of his plans as Mr. 
'Fhackeray uttered-, in conversation at his fireside) they knew 
of certain heritages to which Agnes would be entitled were her 
mother absolved : at any rate, they had reasons of their own 
for claiming her at this opportune moment — as they did. Agnes 
takes Dr. Barnard’s advice and goes off to these prosperous 
relations, who, having neglected her so long, desire her so 
much. Perhaps Denis was thinking of the sad hour when he 
came home, long years afterward, to find his sweetheart gone, 
when he wrote : — ‘‘ O Agnes, Agnes ! how the years roll away ! 
What strange events have befallen us ; what passionate griefs 
have we had to suffer : what a merciful heaven has protected 
us, since that day when your father knelt over the little cot, in 
which his child lay sleeping ! ” 

At the time she goes home to France, Denis is far away 
fighting on board the “ Arethusa,” under his old captain, Sir 
Richard Pearson, who commanded the Serapis ” in the action 
with Paul Jones. Denis was wounded early in this fight, in 
which Pearson had to strike his own colors, almost every man 
on board being killed or hurt. Of Pearson’s career, which 
Denis must have followed in after days, there is more than one 
memorandum in Mr. Thackeray’s note-book : — 

“ ‘Serapis,’ R. Pearson. Beatson' s Memoirs. 

“ Gentleman' s Magazine., 49, pp. 484. Account of action with Paul Jones, 1779. 
GentlemaiC s Magazine, 502, {^. 84. Pearson knighted, 1780. 

“ Commanded the ^ Arethusa ’ off Ushant, 1781, f ‘ Field of Mars,’ 
in Kempenfeldt’s action. \ art. Ushant.” 

And then follows the question, — 

“ How did Pearson get away from Paul Jones?” 


NOTES TO DENIS DUVAL. 


709 

But before that is answered we will quote the story of the 
disaster ” as Sir Richard tells it, “ in words nobler than any 1 
could supply : ’’ and, indeed, Mr. Thackeray seems to have 
thought much of the letter to the Admiralty Office, and to have 
found Pearson’s character in it. 

After some preliminary fighting — 

“We dropt alongside of each other, head and stern, when the fluke of our spare anclior 
hooking his quarter, we became so close, fore and aft, that the muzzles of our guns touched 
each other’s sides. In this position we engaged from half-past eight till half-past ten; during 
which time, from the great quantity and ^riety of combustible matter which they threw in 
upon our decks, chains, and, in short, every part of the ship, we were on fire no less than 
ten or twelve times in different parts of the ship, and it was with the greatest difficulty an<l 
exertion imaginable at times, that we were able to get it extinguished. At the same time 
the largest of the two frigates kept sailing round us the whole action and raking us fore and 
aft, by which means she killed or wounded almost every man on the quarter and main 
decks. 

“About half-past nine, a cartridge of powder was set on fire, which, running from car- 
tridge to cartridge all the way aft, blew up the whole of the people and officers that were 
quartered abaft the mainmast. * 4 ^ * * At ten o’clock they called for quarter from the 

ship alongside ; hearing this, I called for the boarders and ordered them to board her, which 
they did ; but the moment they were on board her, they discovered a superior number lay- 
ing under cover with pikes in their hands ready to receive them ; our people retreated in- 
stantly into our own ship, and returned to their guns till past ten, when the frigate coming 
across our stern and pouring her broadside into us again, without our being able to bring a 
gun to bear on her, I found it in vain, and, in short impracticable, from the situation we 
were in, to stand out any longer with the least prospect of success. I therefore struck. 
Our mainmast at the same time went by the board. * # * 

“ I am extremely sorry for the misfortune that has happened — that of losing his Ma- 
jesty’s ship I had the honor to command; but at the same time, I flatter myself witli tlie 
hopes that their lordships will be convinced that she has not been given away, but that on 
the contrary every exertion has been used to defend her.” 

The ‘‘ Serapis ” and the Countess of Scarborough,” after 
drifting about in the North Sea, were brought into the Texel by 
Paul Jones ; when Sir Joseph Yorke, our ambassador at the 
Hague, memorialized their High Mightinesses the States- 
General of the Low Countries, requesting that these prizes might 
be given up. Their High Mightinesses refused to interfere. 

Of course the fate of the Serapis ” was Denis’s fate \ and 
the question also is, how did he get away from Paul Jones ? A 
note written immediately after the query suggests a hair-breadth 
escape for him after a double imprisonment. 

“Some sailors are lately arrived from Amsterdam on board the ‘ Laetitia,’ Captain 
March. They were takeM-out of the hold of a Dutch East Indiaman by the captain of the 
‘ Kingston ’ privateer, who, having lost some of his people, gained some information of 
their fate from a music-girl, and had spirit enough to board the ship and search her. The 
poor wretches were all chained dow’ii in the hold, and but for this would have been carried 
to perpetual slavery.’’ — Gentleman' s Magazine^ 50, pp. loi. 

Do we see h6w truth and fiction were to have been married 
liere ? Suppose that Denis Duval, escaping from one imprison- 
ment in Holland, fell into the snares of Dutch East Indiamen, 
or was kidnapped with the men of the ‘‘Kingston” privateer? 
Denis chained down in the hold, thinking one moment of Agnes 
and the garden wall, which alone was too much to separate them. 


NOTES TO DENIS DNVAL, 


710 

• 

and at the next moment of how he was now to be carried to per 
petual slavery, beyond hope. And then the music-girl ; and the 
cheer of the “ Kingston's ’’ men as they burst into the hold and 
set the prisoners free. It is easy to imagine what those chapters 
would have been like. 

At liberty, Denis was still kept at sea, where he did not rise 
to the heroic in a day, but progressed through all the common- 
place duties of a young seaman’s life, which we find noted down 
accordingly : — 

‘‘ He must serve two years on board before he can be rated midshipman. Such volun- 
teers are mostly put under the care of the gunner, who caters for them ; and are permitted 
to walk tJie quarter-deck and wear the uniform from the beginning. When fifteen and rated 
midshipmen, they form a mess with the mates. When examined for their commissions they 
are expected to know everything relative to navigation and seamanship, are strictly ex- 
amined in the different sailings, working tides, day^s works, and double-altitudes — and are 
expected to give some account of the different methods of finding the longitudes by a time- 
keeper and the lunar observations. In practical seamanship they must show how to con- 
duct a ship from one place to another under every disadvantage of wind, tide, &c. After this, 
the candidate obtains a certificate from the captain, and his commission' when he can. 
get it.’ 

Another note describes a personage whose acquaintance we 
have missed : 

“ A seaman of the old school, whose hand was more familiar with the tar-brush than 
with Hadley’s quadrant, who had peeped into the mysteries of navigation as laid down by 
J. Hamilton Moore, and who acquired an idea of the rattletraps and rigging of a ship 
through the famous illustrations which adorn the pages of Darcy Lever.” 

Denis was a seaman in stirring times. “ The year of which 
we treat,” says the Annual Register for 1779, ‘‘presented the 
most awful appearance of public affairs which perhaps this 
country had beheld for many ages ; ” and Duval had part in 
more than one of the startling events which succeeded each 
other so rapidly in the wars with France and America and Spain. 
He was destined to come into contact with Major Andre, whose 
fate excited extraordinary sympathy at the time : Washington 
is said to have shed tears when he signed his death-warrant. 
It was on the 2nd of October, 1780, that this young officer was 
executed. A year later, and Denis was to witness the trial and 
execution of one whom he knew better and was more deeply 
interested in, De la Motte. The courage and nobleness with 
which he met his fate moved the sympathy of Duval, whom he 
had injured, as well as most of those who saw him die. Denis- 
has written concerning him : — “ Except my kind namesake, the 
captain and admiral, this was the first ge 7 itle 7 nan I ever met in 
intimacy, a gentleman with many a stain, — nay, crime to reproacli 
him* but not all lost, I hope and pray. I own to having a kindly 
feeling towards that fatal m^.” 

Liitterloh’s time had not yet come \ but besides that we find 


NOTES TO DENIS DUVAL. 


711 


him disposed of with the “ Royal George ” in the first-quoted 
letter, an entry in the note-book unites the fate of the bad man 
with that of the good ship.* 

Meanwhile, the memorandum ‘^Rodney’s action, 1782,” in- 
dicates that Duval was to take part in our victory over the French 
fleet commanded by the Count de Grasse, who was himself cap- 
tured with the ‘‘Ville de Paris and four other ships. “ De 
Grasse with his suite landed on Southsea Common, Portsmouth. 
They were conducted in carriages to the ^George,’ where a most 
sumptuous dinner had been procured for the Count and his 
suite, by Vice-Admiral Sir Peter Parkes, who entertained him 
andliis officers at his own expense.’’ Here also was something 
for Denis to see ; and in this same autumn came on the trial 
of the two Westons, when Denis was to be the means — uncon- 
sciously — of bringing his old enemy, Joseph Weston, to punish- 
ment. There are two notes to this effect. 

“ 17S.2-3. Jo. Weston, always savage against Blaise, fires on him in Cheapside. 

‘‘ The Black Act is 9 George II. c. 22. The preamble says: — ‘Whereas several ill- 
designing and disorderly persons have associated themselves under the name of Blacks, and 
entered into confederacies to suppi^t and assist one another in stealing and destroying deer, 
robbing warrens and fish-ponds’ 4^ * * jt then goes on to enact that ‘ if any person or 

persons shall wilfully or maliciously shoot at any person in any dwelling-house or other place, 
he shall suffer death as in cases of felony without benefit of the clergy.’ ” 

A Joseph Weston was actually found guilty under the Black 
Act, of firing at and wounding a man on vSnow Hill, and was 
hanged with his brother. Mr. Thackeray’s note-book refers 
him to ‘‘The Westons in ‘Session Papers,’ 1782, pp. 463, 470, 
473,” to the GenUepian’s Magazine^ 1782, to “ Genuine Memoirs 
of George and Joseph Weston. 1/782,” and Notes and Queries^ 
Series I. vol. x.f 

The next notes (in order of time) concern a certain very 
aisinterested action of Duval’s : — 

“ Deal Riots, 1783. 

Deal. — Here has been a great scene of confusion, by a party of Colonel Douglas’s 
Light Dragoons, sixty in number, who entered the town in the dead of the night in aid to 
the excise officers, in order to break open the stores and make seizures : but the smugglers, 
who are never unprepared, having taken the alarm, mustered together, and a most desper- 
ate battle ensued.” 


* Contemporary accounts of the foundering of Che ” Royal George ” represent her 
crowded with people from the shore. We have seen how Liitterloh was among these, hav- 
ing come on board to receive the price of his treason. 

t These notes also appear in the same connection : — 

“ Horse-Stealers. One Saunders was committed to Oxford jail for horse-stealing, 
who appears to have belonged to a gang, part of whom stole horses in the north counties, 
and the other part in the south, and about the midland counties they used to meet and ex- 
ciiange . — Gentleirans Magazmc, zq, 16^. 

“1783. Capital Convictiofts . — At the Spring Assizes, 1783, 119 prisoners received 
sentence of Death.” 


712 


.VOTES TO DENIS DUVAL. 


Now old Duval, the perniquier, as we know, belonged to 
the great Mackerel party, or smuggling conspiracy, which ex- 
tended all along the coast; and frequent allusions have been 
made to his secret stores, and to the profits of his so-called 
fishing expeditions. Remembering what has been written of 
this gentleman, we can easily imagine the* falsehoods, tears, 
lying asseverations of poverty and innocence which old Duval 
must have uttered on the terrible night when the excise officers 
visited him. But his exclamations were to no purpose, for it 
is a fact that when Denis saw what was going on, he burst out 
with the truth, and though he knew it was his own inheritance 
he was giving up, he led the officers right away to the hoards 
they were seeking. 

His conduct on this occasion Denis has already referred to 
where he says: — ‘‘There were matters connected with this 
story regarding which I conld not speak. * * * Now they 

are secrets no more. That old society of smugglers is dissolved 
long ago : nay, I shall have to tell presently how I helped my- 
self to break it up.^’ And therewith all old Duval’s earnings, 
all Denis’s fortune that was to be, ^nished ; but of course 
Denis prospered in his profession, and had no need of unlaw- 
ful gains.* 

But very sad times intervened between Denis and pros- 
perity. He was to be taken prisoner by the French, and to 
fret many long years away in one of their arsenals. At last the 
Revolution broke out, and he may have been given up, or — 
thanks to his foreign tongue and extraction — found means to 
escape. Perhaps he went in search of Agnes, whom we know 
he never forgot, and whose great relations were now in trouble ; 
for the Revolution which freed him was terrible to “ aristocrats.” 

d’his is nearly all the record we have of this part of Denis’s 
life, and of the life which Agnes led while she was away from 
him. But perhaps it was at this time that Duval saw Marie 
Antoinette ;t perhaps he found Agnes, and helped to get her 
away : or had Agnes already escaped to England, and was it in 

* Notices of Sussex smuggling (says the note-^ook) are to be found in vol. x. of “ Sussex 
Archaeological Collections,’’ 69, 94. Reference is also made to the Gent/einan's 

vol.viii. pp. 292, 172. 

t The following memoranda appear in the note-book : — 

“ Marie Antoinette was born on the 2nd November, 1755, and her saint’s day is the 
Frte des Morts. 

“ In the Corsican expedition the Legion de Lorraine was under the Baron cle Viomes- 
nil. He emigrated at the commencement of the Revolution, took an active part in the 
army of Cond^, and in the emigration, returned with Louis XVIII., followed him to Gand, 
and was made m.arshal and peer of France after ’15. 

“Another Vi. went with Rochambeau to Americ? in 1780.” 


NOTES TO DENIS DUVAE 


713 

the old familiar haunts — Farmer Perreau’s Columbarium^ where 
the pigeons were that Agnes loved ; the Rectory garden bask- 
ing in the autumn evening ; the old wall and the peaf-tree 
behind it ; the plain from whence they could see the French 
lights across the Channel ; the little twinkling window in a 
gable of the Priory-house, where the light used to be popped 
out at nine o’clock — that Denis and Agnes first met after their 
long separation ? 

However that may have been, we come presently upon a 
note of “a tailor contracts to supply three superfine suits for 
ii/. iis. {Gazetteer and Daily Advertiser) and also of a villa 
at Beckenham, with ‘Hour parlors, eight bedrooms, stables, two 
acres of garden, and fourteen acres of meadow, let for 70/. a 
year,” which may have been the house the young people first 
lived in after they were married. Later, they moved to Fare- 
port, where, as we read, the admiral is weighed along with his 
own pig. But he cannot have given up the service for many 
years after his marriage, for he writes : — “ T’other day when we 
took over the King of France to Calais (H.R.H. the Duke of 
Clarence being in command), I must needs have a post-chaise 
from Dover to look at that old window in the Prior}' -house at 
Winchelsea. I went through the old wars, despairs, tragedies. 
I sighed as vehemently after forty years as though the infatidi 
dolores were fresh upon me, as though I were the schoolboy 
trudging back to his task, and taking a last look at his dearest 

joy-’’ 

“ And who, pray, was Agnes ? ” he writes elsewhere. “ To- 
day her name is Agnes Duval, and she sits at her work-table 
hard by. The lot of my life has been changed by knowing her 
— to ^in such a prize in life’s lottery has been given but a very 
few. What I have done — of any worth — has been done by try- 
ing to deserve her.” Monsieur mon JiJs,^^ — (this is 

to his boy) — “ if ever you marry, and have a son, I hope the 
little chap will have an honest man for a grandfather, and that 
you will be able to say, ‘ I loved him,’ when the daisies cover 
me.” Once'inore of Agnes he writes: — “When my ink is run 
out, and my little tale is written, and yonder church that is 
ringing to seven-o’clock prayers shall toll for a certain D. D., 
you will please, good neighbors, to remember that I never loved 
any but yonder lady, and keep a place by Darby for Joan when 
hjer turn shall arrive.” 



J-XJST = 


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more plainly borne the marks of wide learning and strenuous thought. — Xew York 
Sun. 

A masterly book. !Mr. George is the only man who has not merely put down 
clearly, in black and white, what are the causes of social disease, but odered a cure. 
'-X. Y. Times. 

A courageous thinker, who, though familiar with the learning of the books, 
follows the conclusions of his own reasoning. — Xeto York Tribiute. 

If we were asked to name the most important work of the Nineteenth Century, 
we would name “Progress and I’overty.” — Xew York Era. 

The first great economic work in the English language^ written from the stand- 
point and in the interests of the laboring classes.— World. 

Progress and Poverty beyond any book of our time deserves careful study.— 
Brooklyn Times. 

It has^een subjected to the criticisms of the candid and thoughtful, the exact- 
ing and the cajitious, but all agree that it is an earnest, powerful, courageous and far- 
rcYching work. The author has stated his theories with a clearness of expression, a 
boldness of thought, and an eloquence of style which have attracted the attention 
of the most profound philosophers, and the most learned of political economists.— 
Boston Post. ■ 

A book which no public man can afford to omit reading. — Washington Critic. 

The most remarkable book of the century in its possible effects upon the course 
.>f human events. — Charleston Xew s and Courier. 

Every sentence is as clear as a sunbeam; every proposition is as legitimately 
traced to its logical result as one of Euclid’s.— iiews. 

A trumpet call to a struggle Avliich cannot long be avoided. — PJeiladelphia Star 

A bold and frank exposition of theorie:^ now forcing themselves on public 
notice. — Chicago Tribune. 

Earnest, honest and forcible; radical to the root; bold, sweeping and dogmatic. 
^Louisville Courier-Journal. 

JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY, Publishers, 


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PRINTED Pieces, 840 pages. 

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WOMAN’S Place To-day. 

Four lectures in reply to the Lenten lectures on “Woman,” by the Rev. ' 
Morgan Dix, D.D., of Trinity Church, New York. 

By Lillie Devereux Blake, 

No. 104, liOVEIili’S LIBRARY, Paper CoTers, ^20 
Clotli. Limp, 50 Cents. 

Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake last evening entertained an audience that filled 
Frobisher’s Hall, in East Fdurteenth Street, by a witty and sarcastic handling 
of the recent Lenten talk of the Rev. Dr. Morgan Dix on the follies of women 
of society .— York Times. 

Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake is a very eloquent lady, and a thorn in the side 
of the Rev. Dr. DiXj and gentlemen who, like him, presume to say that woman 
is not man’s equal, if not his superior. Mrs. Blake in her reply to Dr. Dix’s 
recent lecture upon “ Divorce, made some interesting remarks upon the sex 
to which she has the honor to belong.— iVezu York Commercial Advertiser. 

There is no denying that Mrs. Blake has, spartan-like, stood as a break-water 
to the surging flood Rector Dix has cast upon the so-called weaker sex with 
the hope of engulfing it. It is sad to see a gentleman in the position Dr. Dix 
occupies setting himself deliberately at work to not only bring reproach upon 
the female sex, but to make us all look with comtempt upon our mothers and 
sisters. And the worst of his case is that he has shown that spirit in the male 
part of mankind, which is not at all creditable to it, of depreciating the in- 
tellect, the judgment, the ability and the capability of the female sex in order 
to elevate to a higher plane the male sex. According to Dr. Dix the world 
would be better were there no more female children born. And he makes 
this argument in the face of the fact that there would be “hell upon earth” 
were It not for the influence of women, and such women as Mrs, Ihlli© Devereux 
Blake, especially .— Sunday Press. 


Mrs. Blake’s was the most interesting and spicy speech of the evening. She 
was in a sparkling mood and hit at everything and everybody that came to 
her mind .— Evening Telegram. N. Y. 

A stately lily of a woman, with delicate features, a pair of great gray eyes that 
dilate as she speaks till they light her whole face like two great soft stars.— YAd 
Independent, N. Y. 

* ♦ * She advanced to the front of tho platform, gesticulated gracefully 
and spoke vigorously, deflantly and without notes.— Am York Citizen. 

* * * a most eloquent and polished oration. The peroration was a grand 
burst of eloquence . — Troy Times. 

Lillie Devereux Blake, blonde, brilliant, staccate, stylish, is a fluent speaker, 
of good platform presence, and argued wittily and YfeW.— Washington Post. 

There are very few speakers on the platform who have the brightness, 
vivacity and fluency of Lillie Devereux B\a^e.— Albany Sunday Press. 

She is an easy, graceful speaker, and wide-awake withal, bringing our fre- 
quent applause.— Times. 

\ Mrs. Blake’s address was forcible and eloquent. The speaker was frequently 
interrupted by applause . — New York Times. 

The most brilliant lady speaker in the city .— York Herald. 

Has the reputation of being the wittiest woman on the platform.— /Sian An- 
fonto Express. 

Mrs. Blake, who has a most pleasing address, then spoke ; a strong vein of 
sarcasm, wit and humor pervaded the lady’s iQmar^a.— Poughkeepsie News. 

For Sale by all Newsdealers and Booksellers 

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